Feature Wiki

Information about planned and released features

Tabs

ILIAS Push Notification im Forum

Page Overview

[Hide]

1 Summary

The major purpose of the Forum is the communication of users for exchange and share of information with other users directly or user groups. In difference to other object types, the Forum does that by providing tools for an open dialog via direct responses and re-responses.

A key to keep such dialogs pleasant and vivid is a low latency between posts and responses which should be ensured via notification.

This Feature Request wants to improve/decrease this latency to provide a more pleasant experience in the usage of the Forum object and to increase the interaction between users.

2 Problem Statement

To make users aware of new content on which they can react to inside the forum, a notification is sent via mail.
This notification, therefore, is a major factor in initiating a user’s response and therefore to keep the dialog alive.

Unfortunately, the notification via mail can only provide low latency to a certain level since it requires an active user action (pull) to be notified.
And most users do not check their mails hourly, which can be crucial for a lively conversation.
There is currently no passive/prompter way of notification for the forum.

3 Concept

To decrease the latency and improve the quality of dialogs inside the forum, the notification process will get an additional layer before the mail notification.

This will be done by introducing Push notifications to the forum.

When implemented, users can activate push notification for the forum within their notification user settings.
If they do, they receive push notifications on their end device instead of mails, which are much more present to the user of the device.
If no Push notification can be sent or if the push notification was not deployed correctly, the current mail is sent instead.
Push notifications are only deployed before mails that are sent instantly, not before mails generated by e.g. cron (since their information is most often less volatile).

If users deactivate the push notifications for the forum, they will no longer receive such notifications. They will instead receive the current mail (if configured that way).

4 User Interface Modifications

4.1 List of Affected Views

  • Communication > Push Notifications > User Settings
  • Device Screen (not part of ILIAS)

4.2 User Interface Details

  • A new Checkbox would be added to the Configuration of Push Notification Channels in Administration > Communication > Push Notification > User Settings.
  • Otherwise, no changes are required within ILIAS (Other changes a external/ handle by Browser and OS).
A new Provider is added for push notifications. The provider can be selected within the notification user setting: This is currently the first/only provider.
Push notifications are sent to the end device and presented by it. The presentation may vary on different devices/software.

4.3 New User Interface Concepts

None

4.4 Technical Aspects

The deployment of push notification may increase the server workload and may be interpreted as spam by the end device, depending on the usage.
This may lead to denied push notifications and therefore a fallback to mail.

This FR does not provide any measures on the performance of push notifications (like queues etc.)

5 Non-Functional Implications

5.1 Security

5.2 Privacy

Push notifications may contain private data, even within the title.
The exposement of push notifications can be configured on the end device (e.g. "hide on login screen", "show no notification content", ...)

Push notifications are encrypted.
ILIAS doesn't use any third-party software for deployment.
However the usage of Push Notifcation creates a connection to a cloud based routing server provided by the browser manufacturer (most likely FCM, MSP, APN).
This connection is stable and, in most cases, autoconnected on the OS initialisation.
The usages of said connection can be seen in the following graphic:

This results in the following distribution of data:

  • During subscription and delivery, the endpoint is exposed to the cloud server.
  • During subscription, no semantic content is delivered.
  • During delivery, semantic content is encrypted between the service worker and ILIAS and not exposed to the cloud server.
  • During delivery,  the content is exposed to the local OS of the receiver

5.3 Accessibility Implications

Due to their volatility, Push notifications can never be fully accessible.
The accessible presentation of push notifications is processed by the end device (Hardware, OS, Browser) and in its responsibility.

6 Process Information

6.1 Involved Authorities

If this request is related to multiple components, please list both authorities for all related components.

6.2 Contact

Person to be contacted in case of questions about the feature or for funding offers: Szmais, Ingmar [iszmais] and Stake, Sebastian [sstake]

6.3 Funding

Funding status and funding parties are listed in the block 'Status of Feature' in the right column of this page.

If you are interested to give funding for this feature, please get into contact with the person mentioned above as 'Contact'.

7 Discussion

Strassner, Denis [dstrassner], 05 OCT 2026:  Could you add a textual description of the content of the mockups? I know these days everyone only adds mockups to show how the new feature will look. But maybe we should remember that a textual description is essential. And I also want to know where the notification content is composed. What information will be shown in these browser notifications? Will the consumer decide or the notification service? Some textual clarifications will be nice.
And I think I asked this before, but is it correct that this notification will only be shown as long as I have open my browser with at least one ILIAS tab open?
You do not use any infrastructure from Apple, Google, or so on to show browser-independent notifications?

JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe], 05 OCT 2026: We highly appreciate this suggestion and accept the feature for trunk. To make clear how push notifications are provided to a user's endpoint and what infrastructure is used (e.g. Mozilla  updates.push.services.mozilla.com), we kindly ask Ingmar to add this relevant information to the general feature request for push notifications: Add Support of Push Notification to the notification component. Ingmar will conduct further research and provide an architectural overview of the general push notification service and its data flow. The privacy.md for the forum component should also be extended.

Potter, Chris [ChrisPotter], 09 OCT 2026: In order to avoid confusion, I believe that it is important to make rename the 'Public Notifications' setting that can currently be found in the News Settings of Forums. Proposal for changes: https://mantis.ilias.de/view.php?id=48486 

8 Implementation

Feature has been implemented by Szmais, Ingmar [iszmais]

An background task was added for distributions of larger amounts of push notifications.

8.1 Description and Screenshots

Presentation of the setting within "Communication > Push Notifications > User Settings" to activate the Forum notifications
Exemplary presentation of a push notification of a new post in the Forum "Test" under Ubuntu/Linux

8.2 Test Cases

Test cases completed at {date} by {user}

  • {Test case number linked to Testrail} : {test case title}

8.3 Privacy

Information in privacy.md of component: updated at {date} by {user} | no change required

8.4 Approval

Approved at {date} by {user}.

Full Screen

Last edited: Today, 14:22, Szmais, Ingmar [iszmais]