Repository Chat: Add option to hide automatically created status

1 Initial Problem

Currently the message are in repository chats contains some automatically create state informationen regarding join/leav events ect.:

- [USER] has joined the chatroom
- [USER] has left the chatroom
- Welcome to the chatroom
- etc.

Especially join/leave events can disturb the reading flow if there are many users in a room or these events are triggered "to often". Technical explanation: If a socket connection was closed and a user does not re-connect within 15 seconds, this is considered as "user left the room".

2 Conceptual Summary

Therefore we suggest to add an additional checkbox 'Show automatically created messages' below the existing checkbox control which changes the scroll behaviour.
The state of the new checkbox (individual decision of a user in a chatroom) should control whether or not the automatically created state information are displayed in the message area. If checked (default), the behaviour is similar to the current behaviour. If not checked, only user messages (and datetime separators) are displayed.

3 User Interface Modifications

3.1 List of Affected Views

• Repository > Chatroom > View

3.2 User Interface Details

3.3 New User Interface Concepts

None

4 Technical Information

None

5 Privacy Information

None

6 Security Implications

None

7 Contact

• Author of the Request: Jansen, Michael [mjansen]
• Maintainer: Jansen, Michael [mjansen]
• Implementation of the feature is done by: Jansen, Michael [mjansen]

8 Funding

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

• The feature is alreay implemented in the branch of the Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, ask Neumann, Fred [fneumann] for more details.

9 Discussion

Neumann, Fred [fneumann], 22.3.2021
Since the corona semester the ILIAS chat is increasingly used at our university as a supplement to webinars or streamed video. In such scenarios many users open the chat but then switch to other apps on their mobile devices and come back to look what's happend. This causes a lot of automated entry/leave messages which makes it nearly impossible to follow the conversation. So for us the feature was highly needed as a usability fix.

Kunkel, Matthias [mkunkel], 13 APR 2021: Do I understand you right that ILIAS always shows an automatic "leave" message when a user switchs the tab of the browser (but keeps the ILIAS session)?

Jansen, Michael [mjansen], 15 APR 2021: It depends: If you work (use the repository chat) with multiple browser tabs on a desktop device, everything is fine. If you close all tabs of a particular repository chatroom (which means: your browser does not have any WebSocket connection anymore to the Node.js chat server), the chat server will emit a 'User has left the chatroom' event [N] seconds after the connection was closed/lost. This event will result in these 'Status Messages'. Potential problem: If there are many participants in one chat room, this can be disturbing.

There is another issue with mobile devices: Because of trying to manage the device's battery efficiently, some mobile devices will close the WebSocket connection between the browser and the Node.JS server whenever the application (ILIAS) loses focus. We are not able to control this behaviour. If the browser on mobile devices closes a WebSocket connection, the user is not connected to both, the Node.js server and in conjunction the repository chat room. So [N] seconds after connection loss, the Node.JS server will emit the 'User has left the chatroom' event. If the browser re-established the WebSocket connection, this is considered as a 'User joined the chatroom event'.

JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe], 19 APR 2021: We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 8. Please implement the two suggested checkboxes as toggles in one row. Looks nicer.

10 Implementation

Implemented as described above, with the changes requested by the JourFixe.

Test Cases

Test cases completed at 2021-04-27 by Jansen, Michael [mjansen]

• #44631 : Anzeige des Control Panels
• #44632 : Automatische Meldungen anzeigen - aktivieren
• #44633 : Automatische Meldungen anzeigen - deaktivieren
• #44634 : Automatisch an das Ende scrollen - aktivieren
• #44635 : Automatisch an das Ende scrollen - deaktivieren

Approval

Approved at 2021-04-28 by Neumann, Fred [fneumann].