Organization page

This content type lets you highlight your organization’s services, leadership, news, events, contact information, and more.

Why use this content type?

Org pages are what many Commonwealth agencies consider to be their “websites.”

These highly customizable pages really allow you to showcase what your organization has to offer constituents.

The Org page is your organization’s home base, linking to content published in many other templates, including those for Service, Binder, and Curated List pages. You can also refer to your organization on law library types (Advisories, Decisions, etc.).

The page’s section titles can be customized and the sections themselves can be organized in whichever way best represents your organization at any time. You might reserve the top of the page to promote popular services most of the year, but tout news or events for certain periods of time.

The “Offered by” link that automatically appears atop any other page your organization publishes will bring Mass.gov visitors back to your Org page.

All Organization pages are linked from Mass.gov’s comprehensive list of state agencies.

See an example of an Org page you may want to model.

Alternatives to Organization pages

Organization pages are unique and have no true alternative on Mass.gov. However, there are 3 flavors of Org pages:

General Organization (most organizations use this template)
Elected Official (focuses on a state official’s public profile and office)
Boards (for boards, committees and commissions)

The other consideration in creating an Organization page is whether an entity warrants such a page, or would be better served with a less involved Information Details page. The latter might be the choice for something like a program that isn’t a formal organization and that won’t be publishing much more content than the Org page itself.

Compare components available on Info Details, Organization, Promotional, and Service pages.

Organization page training video

Title Banner

Full name

Use the full name of the organization (no need to put “The” at the front).

Short title

Optional. This field is used to shorten the full title of a page when displayed in a breadcrumb. First aim to shorten the actual page title if it’s long, but not so much that the title is no longer clear if someone comes directly to a page from a search engine.

Subtype

This dropdown menu lets you choose between 3 types of Org pages, each of which offer different features:

General Organization (most organizations use this template)
Elected Official (focuses on a state official’s public profile and office)
Boards (highlight members of boards, committees, and commissions)

Acronym

Complete this field if your organization uses an acronym. It will appear next to the full name on the page.

Primary Contact Information

Optional. Select the primary Contact information for your organization that you want displayed on this page. Under the “Content” tab, you can decide where on the page you want this information to appear.

Banner image (Desktop)

Choose the main image you want to appear at the top of your page in a desktop view.

You can adjust the focal point to make sure the desired part of the image remains in view on desktop screens. Once you’ve added an image, use the little white crosshair in the Banner image preview to pick the focus. A green block will always appear to the right of the image. This is part of a design that allows the background image to display in its original resolution and not appear stretched or cut off.

Minimum image size: 1600 x 400 pixels.

The image will not appear on small mobile screens, which will simply display the page title over a solid green background.

Image credit(s)

Image credits appear at the bottom of the page and should have the format: Image Subject (Image Source).

Short Description

Required. Useful for giving visitors a better sense of what your organization does. You can check a box underneath the field to prevent the description from displaying on the page. However, the text you enter into the field will still be used in search results.

Note: The Who We Serve field has been removed from this template. Existing Who We Serve content remains on pages, though the title of the section can now be changed.

Parent page

The required Parent page field appears on all public-facing content types and it powers the breadcrumb-based navigation system. The Parent page field is optional on Organization pages since these are already high-level pages on Mass.gov.

The Mass.gov team prepopulated the field based on an analysis of which child pages belong to which parent pages. Each child page can be assigned only 1 parent, or higher level page.

These connections, displayed in the form of breadcrumbs (i.e., links) above the page title, will help Mass.gov visitors find their way to relevant information regardless of where they start on the site.

Organization(s)

You’ll find the Organization(s) field at the bottom of the first tab in every Mass.gov content type, and in documents. This field tells Mass.gov ’s search which pages belong to which organization. ‌ This field also powers the "Offered by" relationship indicator that displays at the top of all Mass.gov pages.

Labels

This is optional, however it is very helpful. Add one or more labels to be used for grouping and finding related content and documents within the CMS.

Start typing in the Label(s) field to choose an existing label from a dropdown menu that will appear or add a new label by entering it directly.

Overview

Short Description

Logo (optional)

Logos should have a white or transparent background. Your logo should be at least 230 pixels wide. This area is only for organization-specific logos (not the state seal). Must fill out alternative text field for accessibility.

Application Login Links (links to application logins): The links you add here display on the "Log In to..." menu at the very top of the page (learn more about how these are generated or watch a video about Login Links). Learn more about customizing these menu links across Service families.

Add links to your social media profiles here.

Intended audience

This field isn’t being used yet, so there’s no need to fill it in.

Organization parent

Choose the parent organization or organizations whose filtered search results you want your organization’s content to show up within.

Billing Organization

This field has a drop-down list of each organization's billing customer group and billing code. This will appear as "group name (000-000)". Like the Organization(s) field, this field makes sure we're collecting all the data from all of your organization's associated content while also ensuring you're organization is being billed appropriately.

Learn more about using the Billing organization field.

Content tab

Create one or more “Organization Sections” to make up the bulk of your Organization page. Prioritize these sections, and the “Section Content” within them, so that visitors can find the most important information easily.

“Organization Sections” and “Section Content” blocks can be shifted up or down using the drag-and-drop icon on the left or row weight numbers on the right. “Organization Sections” can include 1 or more “Section Content” elements, which include contact information, events, rich text fields, sub-organization lists, and more.

Check the box at the bottom of “Section Content” fields if you want to offset the section from the next section via a “horizontal separator.” Preview the page to get a sense of whether you think the divider is necessary.

The Heading field in “Organization Sections” must be filled in, but you can check a box beneath the field to hide the heading. This is recommended if your “Section Content” elements within the “Organization Section” have their own headings and an overarching heading isn’t needed.

If you choose not to hide the heading, you are given the option to customize the jump link text that appears in the horizontal sub-navigation bar near the top of the page under the page title. Keep this text brief so that the sub-nav bar is easily scannable (the jump link text can be briefer than the actual section heading that the jump link will take people to).

Section Content

One or more “Section Content” elements can be included within an “Organization Section” and across an Organization page.

Section Content elements include:

Callout Link

Callout Links display as light blue rectangles in which you can feature brief, clickable text. Up to 3 Callout Links will display horizontally in a desktop view, and they will appear stacked in a mobile view. You can display as many Callout Links as you like, though we suggest not overwhelming visitors with too many within a section.

Card Group

These display as vertical gray boxes that include a clickable title and a rich text field in which you can include plain text, clickable links, or some combination of the two.

Caspio data page

If you have a Caspio account to build simple database applications, you can embed the apps on your Organization page. Caspio can be used, for example, to build data lookup applications, such as the search for a location.

Mass Digital does not handle Caspio accounts—you must sign up for an account individually or through your agency.

Contact and Logo

If you fill out the Primary Contact Information field under the “Title Banner” tab, that information will appear under your “Contact Us” section. Additional information can also be included in this section.

Custom search

Add a search interface to a Collection or external search destination. Read about custom search options.

Featured Item Mosaic

Use the Featured Item Mosaic to create a group (or mosaic) of 5 images that represent your organization, and that link to representative content.

Creating a Mosaic involves a few steps. Read more about creating a Featured Item Mosaic.

Featured Message

The Featured Message is a great way to provide your audience with important, time-sensitive information and links near the top of your Org page. Read more about creating a Featured Message.

Featured Topics

If there are 1 or more Topic Pages in the site’s main navigation that are especially relevant to your organization, you can add links to them here. This section works like all autofill sections: start typing, and select a page from the list that appears.

You can check a box at the top of this field if you want to display only the title of the Topic page and not display all of the links within it. This can be done to prevent your Org page from getting too long and to help people find what they’re looking for at a glance.

If you add Topic Pages, be sure to check periodically to make sure their content hasn’t changed/is still relevant to your Org page.

Events

Events associated with your Organization will only appear on your Org page if you add an Events section to the page.

Choose the maximum number of Events to display (2, 4, 6, or 8) from the dropdown menu. By default, 2 will be listed if you do not select a number.

The event preview cards will be stacked in pairs if you choose to display more than 2.

Organization Grid

This features the heading “Our Organizations.” Use it to list organizations that are officially under your organization’s oversight. This Grid differs from the Related Organizations field, which might list other state entities that deal with similar subjects or services.

Organization Locations

Add locations and a map by selecting one or more Location content type items from the autocomplete field. (To add a Location you’ll need to create it first.) If you do add locations, Mass.gov will automatically generate a listing page like this one for your Organization page. Users will get to this listing page by clicking on the Location Details button.

Hint: Change the text on that button from the generic “Location Details” to something more specific. You can also change the short description text that appears above the button.

Organization News

You can tell Mass.gov to show up to 8 News articles on your Organization page — 2 in the Featured news item section, and up to 6 in the Automatic section.

The Featured field offers a way to “pin” 2 News articles to your Organization page. Featured news items will appear at the top of your news feed, and they won’t change unless you remove them.

You can also set your Automatic news items to display 0, 3, or 6 News items. Setting your Automatic news items to 3 or 6 tells Mass.gov to automatically add them to your Org page according to their date. If you have more than 6 articles, the 7th (and 8th, 9th, etc.) will be pushed off the front of the Organization Page and onto a listing page. Users will get to this listing page by clicking on the “See all News and Announcements” link:

Once you’ve published your News item, it will appear on your Organization page or pages if you opt to include a News section on your Org page and as long as you didn’t select “none” in your Org page’s automatic news item section. That is, you have to set your Org page to automatically display news in order for News items to appear on it.

Watch a video about adding News items to your Org page.

1 or more autofill fields to fill with links to Organization pages related to yours. Don’t include links for sub-organizations here. Those are better included in an Organization Grid section, as described above.

Rich text field

A wide-open field in which you can include text, links, images, and more.

Video

Embed a Vimeo or Youtube video by inserting the URL into this field.

Flexible Link Groups

You can mix and match link styles, choosing between buttons and text links. You can customize the title text above your links, and add a description, which is especially useful for longer lists of links and documents.

If you select “Buttons” from the Flexible Link Group’s display type dropdown menu, you can check the “Featured” box to highlight some links in blue instead of white boxes.

If you select “Links” from the display type dropdown menu, you can choose to have your link group contract or expand upon page load.

Setup Feedback tab

Visitors to Mass.gov have the option of providing feedback at the bottom of each page. Some use this feature to ask for help, so under the Setup Feedback tab, you will designate a "Visitor help page" to provide contact information for constituents.

Find out more about setting up the Visitor help page.

This tab will be going away in 2023. All links under this tab, with the exception of Application Login Links, will be moved initially to an automatically generated section at the bottom of the page with the heading “(Your organization name) information.” In the CMS, this section will not appear under the "Content" tab with the rest of the Content Sections.

When you can, please remove all links from the fields under the Navigation Menu, and relocate them to other sections of this or other pages.

We recommend moving links to information such as staff directories and public records requests previously included under the Navigation Menu to the “Contact Us” section of your page.

Once you’ve relocated all these links, the Information section will disappear from the bottom of your page.