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Activate/Deactivate notifications of deleted, censored and edited postings

Page Overview

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1 Initial Problem

Currently the forum emits e-mail notifications for the following events:

  1. Posting Created
  2. Posting Modified
  3. Posting Censored
  4. Censorship Reverted
  5. Posting Deleted
  6. Thread Deleted
Corresponding e-mails are sent to ...
  • ... users subscribed themselves (a. By using the links in the `Action Menu` next to the notification bell on the top right, a user enables e-mail notifications for chosen threads or the entire forum / b. By using the corresponding notification options provided by the thread table)
  • ... users in courses/groups where the administrator configures forced subscriptions.
There are other events resulting in an e-mail (a. posting has to be activated by a moderator / b. someone directly replies to my posting, and I activated the 'Directy Reply' e-mail checkbox), but these are not relevant here.

At the moment a user receives an email for every event listed above (1-6). There is currently no option to unsubscribe from particular events.

2 Conceptual Summary

Depending on the global configuration, e-mails are sent either asynchronously via cron-job, or immediatly after the event was triggered. Not every institution uses/can be forced to use cron jobs, so using aggregation for the different kind of forum events is not the solution as long as we do not have other background workers which could gather and (elaborately, because the passed time since an event was emitted has to be respected) aggregate those events to one e-mail.

Therefore we suggest to introduce a new configuration form, where users can select the events they want to receive an e-mail for. 

  • A new shy button has to be added to the `Action` menu on the top right (see: Technical Information).
  • If the actor clicks on the shy button, a `UI Roundtrip Modal` is shown presenting a form (of course we will use the `UI Input` form elements), where the user can select or deselect the events he/she/it will be notified about.
  • The user cannot select/deselect for the 'Posting Created' event. If he/she/it will not be notified about new postings, the user must completely disable the notifications. Why? Because we consider this being the most important of all these events, which was also initially bound to the e-mail subscription before further e-mails have been added in the past.
With this approach we don't need to create/introduce another new view (`Unterwelt`) in the forum.

If a forum is located in a course or a group, users with higher privileges are already able to define whether or not users should be forced to receive notifications. For this scenario, these modators/administrators must be able to also defined the events for users should receive an (forced) e-mail for.

3 User Interface Modifications

3.1 List of Affected Views

  • For users: Forum / All views where the `Action` menu is presented
  • For users with higher privileges (in course/group forums): Forum / Settings / Notifications

3.2 User Interface Details

3.3 New User Interface Concepts

None

4 Technical Information

  • Action Menu: The legacy `Action` menu does currently not support and `UI Component`. We suggest to ...
    • ... write an adapter (like it is already done for the legacy toolbar and the legacy split button) to accept `UI Shy Buttons`.
    • ... wait (what we do not recommend) until the `Action` menu and the complete `Header Action Registration Approach` (currently based on `ilObjListGUI`) is moved to the `UI Framework`.

5 Privacy Information

None

6 Security Implications

None

7 Contact

  • Author of the Request: René Sens, Bundesverwaltungsamt
  • Maintainer: {Please add your name before applying for an initial workshop or a Jour Fixe meeting.}
  • Implementation of the feature is done by: {The maintainer must add the name of the implementing developer.}

8 Funding

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

  • …

9 Discussion

JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe], 14 SEP 2020: We like the suggestion. But for us it is unclear if the settings in courses and groups have only an effect when users are not allowed to disable notifications or if this is a general requirement that has also an effect when users are allowed to enable/disable notifications.

Jansen, Michael [mjansen], 22 Sep. 2020: We (the potential funding party and the maintainer, that's me) decided: A user with 'write' access given for the forum (current behaviour) in a course or group MUST be able to define a general/default set of events the course/group participants should be notified about via email.
So the suggested checkbox group should be added as sub item when the second radio button `Members will be notified automatically` is selected. If the checkbox `Member is not allowed to deactivate notification` is disabled, users cannot change the notification settings. Otherwise they can select the events they would like to be notified about.

JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe], 12 OCT 2020: We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 8.

10 Implementation

Implemented as described above.

Test Cases

Test cases completed at 10.06.2021 by Ahmad, Nadia [nadia]

Approval

Approved at 17.08.2021 by Sens, Rene [Sens] .

Last edited: 19. Aug 2021, 12:27, Ahmad, Nadia [nadia]