Notifications Refinement

Beta 56 further refined the way notifications work in Ares, but I know there’s still room for it to improve.

A few specific questions.

  1. Do you like the new “Game” channel, or were you happier with them just being OOC emits/browser notifications? My thinking was that the Game channel lets you mute/spawn them more easily, and catch up if you missed some.

  2. Events being created/updated are currently showing up both in the Game channel and the ‘Recent Changes’ list on the portal. Do you like having them in both places, or would you prefer them being in one or the other?

  3. I’m thinking of expanding the ‘Recent Changes’ list on the portal to include all portal changes, including scenes shared/unshared and forum posts. Scenes and forum would still have their own highlights on the sidebar, but Recent Changes would be one-stop-shopping for everything. Useful or redundant?

  4. I plan to unify the login notices (“x new mail messages / activity on your jobs / etc.”) with the personal notifications that appear on the portal (via the bell icon / notifications page). So whether you’re logged in via MU client or portal, you’ll see the same basic notifications.

  5. When I do #4, that would mean no login notice for unread jobs (other than ones you’re participating in) or unread posts (other than replies to threads you’ve posted). Is that a problem? I figure a lot of folks now are just going to the portal to see unread jobs/forum anyway. And you could always add jobs/unread or forum/scan to your personal onconnect in-game if you want to be spammed with that info. But if this is going to cause a lot of hearburn for folks, I can reconsider.

Any other ideas to improve notifications are also welcome.

So re 4 & 5 to be sure I have this right:

  • You will not automatically see new request activity on the game
  • You WILL get an notice of new request activity on the portal

y?

@Tat 4/5 is only regarding login notices for job admins. The “you have unread jobs” notice when you log in.

There already is no general nag when you log into the portal (because I removed the unread jobs indicator). Only a bell icon for YOUR job activity.

Does that make more sense?

Ah, so players will see see a notification for their requests?

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Right, the idea is that the login notifications (same as the web portal bell icon notifications) will be more personalized. Activity on your jobs/requests, and replies on your forum posts, as opposed to a general broadcast of “Hey there’s something that may or may not be of interest to you.”

If you’re currently logged in, you’ll also see the more general ones. But you’ll just have more control over the login spam specifically.

  1. Yes. I can spawn it out, turn it off, etc. Especially when the login record gets broken (and everyone logs in all their alts to continue to drive it up and spams everyone), this is a lot easier for people to just turn off/ignore. :smiley:

  2. I don’t have much opinion on this. Both seems fine to me.

  3. Useful.

  4. I think having them unified makes sense. It’s probably something I’d have to see in action to really comprehend and form an opinion on, though.

  5. As long as I can still do it from my onconnect, it’s not any real loss of functionality. In fact, for alts that I don’t use to read forums, it’d be nice to get that off the login info on the MUSH.

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  1. I like the Game channel, honestly. At first I didn’t think I would, but I actually watch more notifications now that it’s separated out that way.

  2. I like them being in both places. Game channel and on the Recent changes for event updates.

  3. Useful. Though I would recommend an added field that tells what kind of change it is, and the ability to filter the list for just the things you want to see. For example, posts, or profile changes or tag changes, scene shares or… that way you can just look for the recent change types you might want to check out.

4 and 5. I do most things from the client, not from the web portal. That said, I don’t mind not being notified about new forum posts or jobs on login. I mostly want to know about mails and pages when I log in.

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Thanks for the feedback so far everyone. For 4/5 – I should also clarify that you’ll still get the OOC emits / browser green box notifications for things like forum posts and jobs submitted while you’re logged on. The only thing I’m changing is the message you see right when you log in.

Random side note - I would ideally like to put the forum posts and jobs onto the game channel instead of OOC emits. But unfortunately those are geared towards smaller groups of players because job and forum categories can each have unique permissions. Channels just don’t work that way, and I’m not inclined to try to do message-specific permissions within a channel. (:horror:) So those will just stay the way they are.

  1. Game channel works for me!

  2. Both seems okay…

  3. Would that be in the sidebar list too? Because that does seem redundant and like it would push off most of the non-scene/forum/event changes. For the main Recent Changes page I guess it’d probably be okay though? I’m not totally sure how I feel about scenes shared/unshared showing up.

  4. Okay…

  5. If I can easily re-add them to my onconnect that’s probably okay. Like Clockwork, I do many things from the client. In my case this has to do with logging, 'cause that’s one thing the portal doesn’t really allow. I’m more likely to notice the client notifications than portal ones, especially when they specify what they are, I think.

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Request:

New activity in scenes should not ring the portal notification bell if you are are logged onto the game AND
on the scene in question. Otherwise I think they probably should.

Doable? Thoughts?

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Sensible but technically challenging.

I was afraid you might say that.

Not sure if this is the right place for it or not, but today at 2:07 pm there was a notification that there was new activity in a scene. But when I click it, it just takes me to the scenes, and doesn’t say what the new activity is.

For the 2:07 pm notification, I have no idea what changed, as I don’t see anything different. Is there a way the notice or something could say what the new activity is?

Thanks either way!

EDITED to add that I just noticed that in a text (as in, cell phone text) scene, I can’t mouse over a clock to see what time it was posted. That would be a great addition! The text scene was empty at 2:07 pm so it’s not directly related to the other bit, but would be nice. Thanks again!

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Found out what the thing that changed was: You were in scene 2604, which was shared at 2:07 Pacific.

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Oh! I was so confused, hahah. I never would’ve guessed. Thanks! <3

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Oh, that probably shouldn’t trigger a notification, heh.

@JinxLuckless The text code isn’t part of the base Ares features, so I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about that.

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The original text code used System poses (like rolls do) - if that’s what GH is still using, that’s probably the issue. I adjusted ours to use regular poses, and the one I submitted as a plug-in is the same.

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@Tat TY :slight_smile: I have a “get to it when I get to it” job sitting around about the text code, so that makes it a lot more likely that I’ll get to it sometime soon!

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Sure thing. You can grab ours off github if you don’t want to wait. I fixed a few buggy things re: aliases and name-matching, too.

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@Tat Thank you kindly. :smiley:

If anyone else is looking at this, I had to change “can_join_scene” to “can_edit_scene” in a few places to get it to work.

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