Notifications

Superbug 12051 for UI work related to Notifications.

Delivery method: Email 

We decided email was the way to get started. All our users have email accounts that they essentially it in all day long. It's also best suited for the amount of information we think will be useful to include in the reports.

While not as ubiquitous on mobile devices as SMS, email will be simpler for us to support. Also, we already have email addresses for users who have set up Chandler Hub accounts.

Plain Text versus HTML 

We're going to start out with plain text and then worry about laying out the reports in HTML later. Plain text is best for mobile devices anyway.

Settings

We will finally need to add a Time zone setting to the Sign-up workflow. It would be nice if we could first present the user with a shortlist of time zones based on what we can figure out from the browser with the option to select Other... to see the 2-pulldown list broken down by region. Bug 6195

• Sign-up.png:
  
• Settings dialog
  

Specifying Email Addresses

While we would like to support sending notifications to multiple email addresses (e.g. 1 user could set up notifications for all the people they collaborate with). We're going to start out with just 1 and simply use the email address the user provided when they signed up for an account.

Frequency of Reports

To start, we're going to offer Daily or Weekly reports.

• Daily reports will be sent out at 6AM every morning.
• Weekly reports will be sent out on Mondays at 6AM.
• Monday's daily report should include a forecast for the upcoming week.
• In the future, we'd like to support more settings for defining when you get reports.

Users will define 1 report for their account for 1-All of their collections (their own and subscriptions).

Content of the Report

See UpcomingReport for mock-up.

To start, we're going to focus on sending out "Forecast" reports that tell you what's coming up on your Calendar and Triage List. This includes:

• Events
• Notes with Tickler Alarms
• Events with Tickler Alarms can be listed 2x: Once with their Tickler Alarm date, a second time with their Event dates.

• A list of all the items that are already in the NOW section

• Link to the Collection

What attributes are displayed?

• Star Stamp = [Starred]
• Event Stamp = [Event]
• Tickler Alarms = [Alarm] (Only for Custom Alarms, not alarms that fire before or after an event time.)

• Event date/time information
• Tickler Alarm date/time

• Collection Name = [Collection]
  • /mc/ link to collection if collection is yours
  • ticketed link to collection if subscription
• Title = Title
• Location = @Location

Layout

• "[Starred][Event/Alarm] Date/Times" go on 1 line
• "[Collection] Title @Location" go on 2nd line

• "[Starred] [Collection] Title go on 1 line if item is neither event nor tickled

Nice to haves

• Don't show the year twice if it's the same in both start and end dates
• Don't show month and yea twice if it's the same in both start and end dates
• Don't show AM/PM twice if it's the same in both start and end dates

• Pre-pend time with "@" and don't show end date/time if it's the same as start date/time

Setting up Notifications

• Add notifications to the Gallery on the Hub homepage
• Add tab to the "Settings" dialog where users can set up notifications across all their collections
• Add link to the "Collection Details" dialog to the tab in "Settings"

• See HubDialogRehaul for Settings dialog mock-ups.
• Widget_Gallery_2.png:
  

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Future

What constitutes a notification?

Generate a notification 'item' for the following 'events' taking place in a collections:

• When somebody created a new item, what kind of item, it's title and when.
• When somebody adds, removes or deletes an item from the collection, what kind of item it is, it's title and when.
• When somebody edited an item, what kind of edit, what kind of item, it's title and when.
• When an item pops to NOW, what kind of item, it's title and when

How do users set up Notifications?

• Add Widgets gallery to hub.chandlerproject.org homepage?
  • Install an iGoogle / iPhone / Dashboard / Vista Sidebar widgets
  • Receive notifications via Email / SMS - Set up in the Settings dialog
  • Send report: Live, as it happens; Every hour; Once a day; Once a week
• Can this be accessible from the Settings dialog? Collection Details dialog?
• Do we have a x-sell area in the web UI? where we can advertise new features?

Notifications Open Issues

• Can we differentiate between when someone manually triages an item versus when it automatically pops to NOW because of a ticker alarm or the event start date/time rolls around?
• Can we display the contents of the item in-place? Expand the notification line-item to show it?
• Can we link to the item in the user's account?

Set up Open Issues

• What do SMS addresses look like?
  • We can pre-populate domains for the major providers (with a pulldown) so users only have to enter their phone number.
• Which IM networks can we support? Anything Jabber-based: e.g. Google Talk

Notifications Widget - Workflow

1. Go to Chandler Hub: Click on QE widget in gallery
2. Click on iGoogle link, go to Chandler Hub Notifications iGoogle widget on Google
   • Do you want to add this widget to your iGoogle page
   • Log into iGoogle (if you aren't already)
   • Click [Yes]
3. Goes to your iGoogle homepage - where the Chandler Notifications widget has been instantiated
4. Log into Chandler Hub in the widget and set collection option - users should be allowed to change the collection option for the widget at any time.

Interaction

• Users can control how much they see by clicking more/less
• Can we avoid scrollbars inside the widget? The widget can just get bigger and you use the browser scrollbar?
• I think most of the time, you'll just want to see the most recent notifications, so I think a widget scrollbar isn't worth the space it would take up

Notification Proposal

See the NotificationArchitectureProposal for implementation details.

Styling for Log in

• Same for all widgets

Styling - Logged in

• Title Bar: Same for all widgets
• Welcome: Same for all widgets
• username!: Same for all widgets

• DATE/TITLE: 10pt, Bold, #000000
• Collection Name: 10pt, Bold, #383838
• Event Date: 10pt, Bold, #383838
• Notification: 10pt, #383838
• Editor/User: 10pt, Bold, #383838
• Item Title: 10pt, Italic, #383838
• Changed Attribute Values: 10pt, Bold, #383838
• NOW: 10pt, Bold, #33CC00
• LATER: 10pt, Bold, #FFCC00
• DONE: 10pt, Bold, #33CC00
• Notification Event Time: 10pt, Bold, #808080
• More Less: 10pt, Bold, Link Blue
• Dividers: 10pt, Bold, #CCCCCC

Mockups

• Login: See WebWidgetsMockups#LogIn

• Collection pulldown: All collections, Collection 1, Collection 2, Collection 3, etc.
• Notifications_Options.png:
  

• Notifications_Logged_in.png:
  
• WW-Notifications_Fancy.png:
  

Resources

• See CosmoImages

-- MimiYin - 25 Feb 2008