Application: smart-answers
Serves smart answers on GOV.UK
Ownership
#govuk-platform-health owns the application and is responsible for updating its dependencies.
Hosting
The production version of this application is hosted on AWS.
SSH Access (AWS)
gds govuk connect ssh -e integration calculators_frontend
gds govuk connect ssh -e staging aws/calculators_frontend
gds govuk connect ssh -e production aws/calculators_frontend
Run a rake task
Links
README
!
Warning
The content below is pulled in directly from the repository.
Links might not function properly.
Smart answers are a great tool for content designers to present complex information in a quick and simple way. Defining what they are – decision trees? calculators? tools? is immaterial – what they do is provide a reusable technical framework to build a quick and simple answer to a complex question.
Read more in Lisa Scott's GDS blog post.
Screenshots

Live examples
Nomenclature
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Smart Answer: The flow, questions and outcomes.
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Flow: Defines the questions, outcomes and the rules for navigating between them.
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Landing page: Contains a description of the Smart Answer and the "Start now" button that leads to the first question.
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Question page: Contains an individual question that's asked in order to help arrive at at an outcome.
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Outcome page: Contains the result of the Smart Answer based on responses to individual questions.
Technical documentation
This is a Ruby on Rails application that contains:
- A Rails application to serve Smart Answers
- A DSL for creating Smart Answers
- The Smart Answers that appear on GOV.UK
NOTE. This application doesn't use a database and as such it doesn't include the ActiveRecord Railtie in application.rb.
Dependencies
Smart Answers
Smart Answer flow development
Smart Answers app development
Debugging
Registering on GOV.UK
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bundle exec rake publishing_api:sync_all
will send all smart answers to the Publishing API.
Licence
MIT License