StoryBoard/Notifications

meeting irc logs here: http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/meetings/storyboard/2015/storyboard.2015-11-18-15.00.log.html

followup in #storyboard here: http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23storyboard/%23storyboard.2015-11-18.log.html#t2015-11-18T15:46:32

To be worked into a more readable spec for notifications, that will form the backbone of a roadmap for the next few months of StoryBoard development.

Spec

A user needs to know:

1. When something (that affects that user) updates (in a way that affects that user)

Requirements:

a) Things that affect users must be tracked. Selectable subscriptions exist.     If not all things that can be updated in a subscribed resource will be relevant, then...

b) EITHER: SB needs to track whether or not an update to a subscribed resource is relevant to the user,  OR:         subscriptions need changing so that users can only subscribe to relevant things.

i) What things can update?

currently: Stories are related to projects via tasks. Project groups collect projects, which then relate to stories via tasks. An asterisk at the end means that a user can currently subscribe to/unsubscribe from this update directly.

* Stories: - Creation* - Removal - Title - Description - Tags Added* - Tags Removed* - Comments* (TODO: find out if 'title' and 'description' = 'story details changed' in preferences) * Tasks (listed on story detail page) - Creation* - Removal* - Title - Assignee* - Priority* - Status (todo, review, merged, invalid)* (TODO: find out if 'title' = 'task details changed' in preferences) * Project (to which the task belongs.) - Creation - Removal (currently not possible) - Title - Description * Project Groups (to which the project belongs): - Creation - Removal (currently not possible) - Title - Description

Worklists and boards are ways of viewing stories and tasks. They can show tasks on their own, or stories (which contain tasks).

* Worklists - Title - Permissions - Item added (story or task) - Item removed (story or task) - Items reordered - Changes to item (see stories and tasks above) - Worklist removed * Boards - Title - Description - Permissions - Lane added - Lane removed - Lane title - Lanes reordered - Card (story or task) added to lane - Card (story or task) removed from lane - Card (story or task) changed (see stories and tasks above)

ii) How does storyboard keep track of these?

Every POST, PUT, or DELETE request triggers a hook in the API, which publishes a message to the rabbitmq queue representing the event (eg.   a PUT request that edits a story creates a `story_details_changed`    event message).

`storyboard-worker-daemon` watches this queue for messages and passes them to handler processes. Currently, the only handler is one which creates records in the `subscription_events` table relating to what the request did (eg. a PUT request that edited a story creates a   `story_details_changed` event in `subscription_events`).

The Recent Events list on the dashboard leverages the API to get the contents of this table relevant to the logged-in user, and displays them.

iii) How will a user tell SB which updates to look out for?

Should be: easy to find, easy to change, precise.

currently:

* User can click stars to subscribe to stories, projects and project groups. There is no way to subscribe directly to a task; the user must subscribe to the story containing that task. Star locations (always on right)

Stories:

* Story list page (accessed from sidebar) * Story detail page (accessed by clicking on story name in list) * Projects detail page (accessed by clicking on project name in projects list) * Project group detail page (accessed by clicking on project group name in project groups list)

Projects:

* Project list page (accessed from sidebar) * Project group detail page (accessed by clicking on project group name in project groups list)

Project Groups:

* Project group list page (accessed from sidebar) *preferences for timeline events accessed from profile page (linked from 'profile' button on sidebar)

*popup timeline filters accessed from story detail pages (linked from wheel next to 'events timeline' heading)

These both look like : Checkboxes with 'save' button at the bottom, with the following options:

Story created Story details changed Tags added Tags deleted Task created Task assignee changed Task status changed Task priority changed Task details changed Task deleted User comment

I think the current implementation meets criteria of being easy to find and easy to change, but isn't precise enough yet. Issues:

1) Tied to stories. Settings are only for timeline events, not recent events. Timeline            events currently apply to stories only (and display on story detail page),             but recent events could be more broad (eg: boards and worklists). Either changes             to these need to update the timeline events on a story, or we need a way to set user             preferences for recent events. (related: a user may wish to have different preferences for timeline events and recent events)

*What will the preferences be? *Where will a user set them?

2) User should be able to subscribe to all projects in a group except one, and so on. Maybe we           need a corresponding 'unsubscriptions list' that overrides the subscriptions? Which leads onto...

3) More things need to be tracked. From the list above, it's clear that far more things can update than           can be automatically tracked by a user. It's likely that a manager of a team using a board will want to            track the board as it updates, for example.  iv) How will SB keep track of these?

Currently: [To be filled in]

c) SB must inform user of these updates

i) The user needs to know *what* has updated

Suggested data to relay (should this be configurable?):

- 'what was updated?' - 'what subscribed groups does the updated resource fall into?' - 'when was it updated?' - 'who updated it?' - 'does this update require my input?'

ii) The user should be notified in the most suitable way. What is this, and should *this* be configurable? (eg: what channels? how frequently should a user be notified?)

i) currently:

*recent events on dashboard

*events timeline on story detail pages

*plugin merged, webclient button to turn them on in user preferences

ii) in progress:

*infra's email configuration needs merging for notifications to work on s.o.o:             https://review.openstack.org/#/c/270331/ We will want to make this more finegrained.

iii) todo :        * Let everyone know it's working and await feedback!

Roadmap Plan

We now have some detail about the current implementation. We need more input from users to work out where this falls short. re: emails: we'll probably get comments on these as we work on them. So far, people have said they want email notifications, so we'll need those before we're likely to get a lot of feedback.


 * 1) Overall Roadmap

We could probably refine this forever, so at what point should we consider changing priority?

1. Fix bugs in current implementation (including making it consistent).

a) User preferences patches in review -- Done!       Though we should make more of these to allow users to set more preferences.

b) Decide on approach to timeline events vs recent events   If we separate them, then:       * Decide on candidates for recent events (bigger set containing set of timeline events?)       * Implement           * backend to store preferences and handle them           * UX for preferences

c) Support for worklists and boards in:      * recent events (see above, since these don't form part of a story, unless we change that)       * timeline events? (eg: 'this story has been added to board x'. does anyone want this?)      * user preferences (checkboxes to enable and disable notifications)

2. Merge email patches so that some basic email notifications work (currently 'off' by default')

a) story https://storyboard.openstack.org/#!/story/2000456  b) Then get feedback and improve these

3. Improve UX for Recent Events a) align all timestamps to right-- Done!  b) display tag events instead of empty boxes-- Done!

(Those two things were done before they were added to this wiki page; have been included so it's clear what sort of thing the vague 'improve ux' entails here.)

4. Give better variety of subscription options. a) track more things! (probably falls under 1b)  b) allow user to unsubscribe from story within a subscribed project, and similar