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News Timeline: Notification on Interaction

1 Initial Problem

It is very easy to overlook user interactions (comments, emotial reactions, ...) for news entries, since the owner of a news entry has to look into the timeline regularly. This problems occurs for both users who are "offline" and user who are logged in and who have the "Timline" page opened in their browser.

2 Conceptual Summary

2.1 Extension of "daily" news digest mail subscription cron job

• We would like to extend the agrregation of the "daily diegst news notification" mail in such a way that comments and emotional reaction (such as like, love, ...) are included in the "daily" mail that is sent out by the existing cron job.
  • With this alle users who have subscribed to a course / group can see the interaction activity on the timeline
  • it might be a good idea to "visually" aggregate the information on timeline interaction close to the affected news entry

## NEWS ENTRY
- 3 new comments
* User, Timestamp: shortened content of comment (first 60 characters)
* User, Timestamp: shortened content of comment (first 60 characters)
* User, Timestamp: shortened content of comment (first 60 characters)
- 2 new reactions
* User, Timpestamp reacted with  {like, love, angry, astonished, ...}
* User, Timpestamp reacted with  {like, love, angry, astonished, ...}

2.2 Auto Refresh of Timeline

• For those users who are logged we would like to implement a "auto reload" or auto refresh of the timeline screen. The timeline screen should update itself automatically every minute, so that users who are logged in see if there are changes.

2.3 On-Screen Notification for Entry Owners

• Fo rall those who are logged in but a in whatever context in ILIAS it would be ideal if a short popover message would be shown to the owner of an entry if there is a new comment or reaction to a news entry just as it is done with "User XY is online"
  • for comments the message could read "USER AB has commented one of your _timeline_ posts" whereas "timeline" is a link to the relevant timeline
  • for emotional reactions the message could read "USER AB has reacted one of your _timeline_ posts" whereas "timeline" is a link to the relevant timeline

3 User Interface Modifications

3.1 List of Affected Views

none.

3.2 User Interface Details

{For each of these views please list all user interface elements that should be modified, added or removed. Please provide the textual appearance of the UI elements and their interactive behaviour.}

3.3 New User Interface Concepts

No new user interface concepts.

4 Technical Information

No technical issues.

5 Contact

• Author of the Request: Marko Glaubitz, universität Freiburg
• Maintainer: Killing, Alexander [alex]
• Implementation of the feature is done by: Killing, Alexander [alex]
  

6 Funding

If you are interest in funding this feature, please add your name and institution to this list.

• Universität Freiburg

7 Discussion

Killing, Alexander [alex], 10 Apr 2017: I support the idea in general. I am not sure if we really need a notification setting for each single new entry. Another option would be to activate notification for the whole timeline and inform on other users new posts as well and also on activities in other postings the user is involved (e.g. by liking or commenting).

Glaubitz, Marko [mglaubitz], 10. April 2017: I think that a daily info through the "daily course summary" mail about reactions to a timeline post might  be a little slow paced, since users are supposed to interact and communicate in a "socialmedia-esque" way.
I'm afraid that putting the info about a like or a comment in the daily summary mail (along with a lot of other things) will, in my opion, quench the users' enthusiasm in using this feature for their group events / news / infos.

Killing, Alexander [alex], 27 July 2017: I think the name of the cron job is misleading. It is possible to set lower time periods, e.g. every 10 minutes for this job. I think the existing cron job should be sufficient, since it may become distracting to be informed on the same subject through different mails. I would include information about likes and comments in the existing notification mails.

Glaubitz, Marko [mglaubitz], 29.09.2017: The entry has been profoundly revised end extended as a suggestion for 5.4.

Killing, Alexander [alex], 23 Oct 2017: We may split this page into multiple FRs. Autoloading may discract the user, when currently acting on the page. Message OSDs are currently not available for news, which may be a precondition for having it for comments/likes.

JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe], Oct 23, 2017: We appreciate the suggestion for an "extension of "daily" news digest mail subscription cron job" as described in 2.1 and schedule it for 5.4. Comments should be assigned to news entries (also for automatically created news). The suggestions for an auto-refresh (2.2) and OSD (2.3) should be tackled as separate feature requests.

8 Implementation

Test Cases

Test cases completed at 22 OCT by Zenzen, Enrico [ezenzen]

• C24876: Konfiguration des Cron Jobs "Mail für Gruppen News"

Approval

Approved at 2018-10-15 by Glaubitz, Marko [mglaubitz].