From Wednesday 19 December, users of RoS online services will notice a new visual layout of the services portal. This update has been completed to bring the service in line with Government Digital Services (GDS) best practice, and also add valuable improvements to the user journey for our customers.

What’s changing?

The changes we’re making relate solely to the visual appearance of the portal. The screenshot below shows how the new homepage will look, though the specific services available (like the Discharge Service, ScotLIS, eForms etc.) are tailored for each individual user.

In the new homepage, each of these RoS service is shown in the centre of the page, rather than the left hand navigation found in the previous design. This is a key feature of GDS best practice, and is also useful for customers who use a large number of RoS services. For instance, the left hand menu in the version we’re replacing provided access for all applications, which could cause confusion for customers when proceeding with a particular application type only. With the new implementation, you can navigate to a different application type by using the ‘Home’ link on the header bar.

The other main change is relating to the latest news. In the previous version, all new stories were front and centre, rather than the services themselves. In the upcoming enhanced homepage, we’ve created a separate area for news stories, as well as a homepage alert for any unread stories (which you can see in the screenshot of the new layout shown in this blog).

At the same time, we recognise the importance of advising when services will be unavailable for regular maintenance or similar reasons. That’s why any such notices will be shown on the homepage, and will remain there until the matter covered in the message has passed.

Find out more

If you have any questions regarding the new layout, please contact our customer services team.