SCOTT

SaaS Collaboration Ownership Transfer Tool

Project Type

End-to-end product design for a Meta internal tool

My Role

Product Designer

Target Users

80k + Meta Employees (Full-time & Contingent)

Duration

4 Months (Aug 2021 - Dec 2021)

Contribution

User research
Stakeholder interview
Product management
High-fidelity prototypes

Impact

100% of respondents feel the SCOTT workflow is better than the current manual process

Development still in progress

Final Designs

Overview

Background

Let’s be honest, employees who leave the company are lazy. The ones who do not manually transfer their files out of their non-shared cloud folders creates orphaned data, meaning that it has no active owner. This orphaned data poses a lot of risk because…

Files get locked. With no owner, permission controls & editing can’t be done.
The legal process to retrieve orphaned data is lengthy with lots of parties involved, which costs time and money.
Once orphaned data is recovered, it may include sensitive information that can get into the wrong hands.
When important files can't be found, with no point of contact they are lost forever.

In August 2021, about 33% of Meta's assets didn't have an active owner- up to 25 million assets!

Before identifying SCOTT as our solution, we were asked to build an "Admin Portal".

How the project started

A Meta security team had a vision to make an internal tool like Bettercloud, that centralizes a company’s cloud asset files into one master management portal. They were starting work on some back-end file scanning systems that could group files with specific sharing permissions, data types, etc. The team approach used to design a UI so employees can take action on the identified risks their systems would surface.

There was no concrete problem identified though!

We crafted a research plan to take the proper steps to identify different types of risks and ensure we would deliver a solution that is impactful, feasible, and delightful to users.

Bettercloud - The Inspiration Behind This Initiative

Discovery

Research Planning

What is the highest impact MVP focus to limit security risks of our assets and data at Facebook?

Research Goals

Learn how users store and share files, and which behaviors create risks
Identify data classifications, including what are considered important and/or active files
Empathize with employees about the pain points they encounter during asset transfers & off-boarding
Discover new ways we can improve the workflows of shared drive admins & support

Who

13 participants, mix of teams , locations and tenure

What

1:1 60 min interviews

What

Remote Sessions through VC

When

Aug - Sept 2021

Research Results

The research was very informative and successful. Some key themes where identified…

Key Quotes

"If a leaving employee can just check a box to send all files to manager, we would know that file sharing is legal and clean."

Sharing becomes a legal risk when it is not done by the owner, because it may result in sensitive data being leaked without consent.

“There are too many tasks for onboarding requests. If assets get transferred automatically during offboarding, will cut down 90-95% of support requests.”

The current reactive approach to remove orphaned data is a lot of work, time, money, and coordination- support is getting burned out. A proactive approach would greatly reduce support requests and the amount of orphaned data.

“People don’t know how it (shared drives) functions or works.. there are no standards.”

Employees aren’t properly informed of best sharing practices, or where to store files to limit risks. They also don’t fully understand what is considered an important or sensitive file.

“Whenever someone leaves, sending them a checklist or automated email saying “Hey, make sure you do XYZ” will prevent a lot of orphaned data.”

Leaving employees create a lot of orphaned data because they aren’t notified enough to offboard their files, and they don’t fully understand the consequences of not doing it fully & properly.

“Giving owners a heads up if the added email address is external will be very beneficial. Vendor sharing is much more controlled.”

Different sharing types have important implications, and there aren’t enough notifications to warn employees of risks. Employees also need to know which of their files have external members.

“We need to send leaving employees to a tool that the user can do easily- transfer content.”

There aren't any service tools to transfer everything in bulk quickly. Doing it manually each file at a time causes fatigue and employees don’t finish full file offboarding.

User Personas

Five user personas were identified that are involved in the file transfer process. I showcase two of them here- the senders or receivers of file transfers.

Employee Leaving Meta

Role

Leaving Meta in certain time window
Can be abrupt or voluntary (more time to offboard)

Frustrations

Stressed thinking about where each file should go in complex shared drives
Not knowing which files are important or active at a glance
Uncentralized - many tabs open to offboard files across various platforms
Lack of sensitive information or external members indicators
Manager not always the best fallback owner

Goals

Easily transfer contents to correct new owners
Archive or delete old/unwanted files
Prevent data leaks during transfer process

Needs

Bulk change owner function
Chain of fallback owners
Guided offboarding form
Quick way to automate file transfers for abrupt terminations or lazy employees

Employee Requesting Access to Orphaned Files

Role

Requests access to old employees personal drives
Requests a permanent deletion sensitive information
Requests reassigning permissions and access of orphaned files

Frustrations

Can’t have admin access to important files left in an employee's personal drive- editing and changing permissions are restricted
The retrieval process can take a couple weeks. Support needs both former employee’s manager & HR approval

Goals

Resolve their requests quickly with no data leaks
Files are moved to correct folder where the right people have access to it
Receive the correct files with correct permissions in place

Needs

Employees to properly offboard all their contents before leaving the company

User Journeys

User journeys were created to better organize our thoughts around offboarding, since that seemed to be a primary problem during our interviews.

Defining The Problem

Automation

Current processes around asset off-boarding, support requests, and risk mitigation are manual and very tedious. Automation and more notifications would significantly reduce time and security risks.

Security

There is too much orphaned data, and it is difficult to understand the risk landscape i.e. leaking sensitive information to external vendors. There aren't enough alerts, visibility, and indicators to prevent these risks.

Education

Leaving employees don’t always understand data security risks & importance of proper file transfers. There are also learning gaps about the limitations of various cloud storage platforms and processes to retrieve assets.

Reactive Approach

Currently most of the support requests and data leaks are a reactive approach that could have been prevented. A larger proactive approach to prevent data security risks and orphaned files is absent.

Legality

When orphaned files are retrieved through manager & HR approval, it creates legal risks since the original owner of the file doesn’t approve the transfer and sensitive information could be leaked.

Decentralization

It’s difficult to understand ownership and security risks across the individual cloud storage platforms, shared drives, and folders. Without a holistic view of everything and bulk actions, auditing and execution takes time.

Jobs to Be Done Framework

People Problems

JBTD Statement

As an employee leaving the company, it is hard and tedious to transfer my files to the right owners.

Group and surface active & important files that need to be transferred so the leaving employee can quickly action on them.

As an asset Helpdesk support member, I am burnt out from too many tasks that could have been prevented with proper offboarding.

Maximize efficiency by condensing all admin capabilities into one place with powerful automation rules to close tasks easier and quicker.

As a team manager/drive admin, I am concerned about leaking sensitive information during the audit process.

Highlight the state of shared drives with data security alerts that trigger notifications and automation workflows.

Ideation

I hosted a brainstorm session, following design thinking techniques, to ideate on potential solutions and determine the best MVP solution vs. long term ones. I presented the user research and user journeys- participants filled in the opportunities row in the user journey, and then we placed the ideas on a scale of ease of implementation vs impact to users.

MVP Off-Boarding Focus

Creating an off-boarding tool that identifies high-priority files and automates the transfer of them would prevent orphaned data and solve a lot of the pain points identified during our user research- such as users being overwhelmed with what to transfer. The focus for the first launch is just GDrive, since it is the most popular storage platform at Meta.

The Challenge

Surfacing Risks - We were waiting on engineering XFN to finish the data categorization scanning system, so we couldn’t add any features that would group specific types of data for MVP- such as files that contain social security numbers. We were limited to the data structure used in GDrive.

Flexibility - We also had to cater different personalities for this tool. The workflow has to be as quick as possible for the lazy employees or abrupt terminations; while also providing advanced options and customization for employees who are more diligent with their off-boarding.

Workflow Diagram

Preliminary Wireframes

Leaving Employee's View

New Owners View

Design Iterations + Usability Testing

1st Iteration

Some Design Decisions

Quick Transfer vs. Granular Transfer

We allowed users to choose whether they wanted to bulk transfer everything in a few clicks, or make more granular suggestions to cater both lazy and meticulous employees.

Recommended “Buckets”

To add accelerators and provide users who don’t know which files are active, we grouped files into four categories that GDrive metadata allowed us to collect: "Multiple Collaborators", "Recently Updated", "Recently Accessed", "Popular".

“Transfer Everything Without Viewing” Warning

Because files with sensitive data could go in the wrong shared drive when conducting a bulk quick transfer, we added a confirmation modal to influence users to look at their files first.

Homepage

Communicated to users how many days they have left to transfer their files
Number of how many recommended files the users have left to transfer
Educational “Do” and “Don’t” transfer cards. Also quick links to various other resources.

Key User Testing Feedback

Looping in Managers in Process

Users would feel more comfortable if the manager has an approval step before the last day for proper send off.

Solution - Dual notification to manager that creates a review task; Add confirm with manager button.

Clearer CTA with Less Text

The homepage was very busy and some users had trouble discovering how to transfer all their files vs specific ones.

Solution - Only one start transfer button; clean up text on homepage; Streamline more customizable configuration of recommended files in modal flow.

Delete Functionality

Users wanted to review their GDrive first and delete unwanted files before bulk transferring. Also for any leftover files that are not “recommended”, they wanted the ability to delete them.

Solution - Additional first step “Review Files in your GDrive”; Add ability to delete leftover files that aren’t flagged to transfer.

Transfer Now

Some users wanted to know their transfer was successful before the manager signs off on it, since there may be errors.

Solution - Ability to transfer items now or after their last day.

Post Survey Results

Avg UX Score 4.25/5

100% of respondents felt SCOTT is better than current manual GDrive process.

Easier to Understand Statistics

Fractions of files left were hard to understand. Also, it was confusing how the counts for recommended file buckets added up to the total files left to to transfer.

Solution - Remove fraction counts and change to “Total Files Left”; Add progress breakdown bar graph; No breakdown of recommended buckets.

2nd Iteration

New Dev Restriction & Challenge

Our XFN partners who were working to pull the data from GDrive informed us that the individual file table data wouldn’t be ready by MVP launch. This meant we had to design even more powerful transfer conditions without viewing any files in SCOTT.

Homepage

Only one CTA start button.
Explanation of steps with “To-Do” tags to inform users about the process and their progress.
“Your GDrive File Breakdown” to communicate the progression towards all files having a new location or being deleted.
Additional first step “Review Files in your GDrive” so users would delete unwanted files before bulk transferring everything.

Configure Transfer

“All Files” or “Some Files” transfer. “Some Files” populates additional inputs below so users can be specific what they want to transfer.
“Externally-shared files” automatically selected to ensure those files are transferred to limit risks.
Transfer now vs. last day.

Everything Else

After users set up their “to transfer” parameters, there will most likely be leftover files that don’t have a decision. We provided the option to make a decision for them on this step- including delete.

Completed State

Added manager confirmation task.
Additional steps post GDrive transfer submissions were included, such as auditing other SaaS platforms like dropbox.
“Your GDrive File Breakdown” changed colors based on the user's selections.

Key User Testing Feedback

Explanation of Tool Still Unclear

The homepage is still too busy and it’s unclear what the tool does- users expected a file table view in the flow. There are not enough direct callouts that it's only for setting up automation transfer rules and users didn’t notice some important functionality. Users want to know the full scope of this tool before making decisions.

Solution - Clean up the homepage even more. Add an intro page in the wizard flow that fully explains the process before making decisions.

Progress Towards Completion & Statuses Confusing

“Unmanaged” is too ambiguous; Statuses have dual conflicting functionality- processing/scheduled statuses vs. transfer decisions- multiple colors make it unclear the user is done.

Solution - Reduce progress counter only statuses to “Needs Decision”, “Has Decision”, and“Manually Removed from GDrive”. Emphasize completed state even more. Also, add toasts with processing progress so it is in a separate location.

Step 2 “Transfer Ownership” Causes Anxiety

The overload of fields here make users feel uneasy, and they are prone to not complete it. Also for the parameters, users didn’t know which values to input.

Solution - Split out configure transfer in their own steps/pages i.e. configure transfer, assign location, schedule transfer. For the parameter values, there should be default values guide users through the flow.