The chat is not showing Unread messages when replied to a chat via email

[m-natarajan]

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Version Number: v1.4.83-2 Reproducible in staging?: y Reproducible in production?: y If this was caught during regression testing, add the test name, ID and link from TestRail: Email or phone of affected tester (no customers): Logs: https://stackoverflow.com/c/expensify/questions/4856 Expensify/Expensify Issue URL: Issue reported by: @VictoriaExpensify Slack conversation: https://expensify.slack.com/archives/C049HHMV9SM/p1718319503018869

Action Performed:

1. Go to staging.new.expensify.com
2. Initiate a DM to B
3. As B reply by email

   Expected Result:

   The reply displayed as unread message in LHN

   Actual Result:

   The reply not displayed in LHN

   Workaround:

   Unknown

   Platforms:

   Which of our officially supported platforms is this issue occurring on?

   • [ ] Android: Native
   • [ ] Android: mWeb Chrome
   • [ ] iOS: Native
   • [ ] iOS: mWeb Safari
   • [ ] MacOS: Chrome / Safari
   • [X] MacOS: Desktop

Screenshots/Videos

https://github.com/Expensify/App/assets/38435837/3a791359-811e-46f5-a430-c8226c9f9ca2

View all open jobs on GitHub

Upwork Automation - Do Not Edit

• Upwork Job URL: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~0190fc8ada72fd4d14
• Upwork Job ID: 1801758222363871252
• Last Price Increase: 2024-06-26

Issue Owner

Current Issue Owner: @

[melvin-bot[bot]]

Triggered auto assignment to @mallenexpensify (Bug), see https://stackoverflow.com/c/expensify/questions/14418 for more details. Please add this bug to a GH project, as outlined in the SO.

[melvin-bot[bot]]

Job added to Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~0190fc8ada72fd4d14

[melvin-bot[bot]]

Triggered auto assignment to Contributor-plus team member for initial proposal review - @thesahindia (External)

[mallenexpensify]

@thesahindia was testing cuz Internal wasn't assigning a C+ for some reason

[MelvinBot]

This has been labelled "Needs Reproduction". Follow the steps here: https://stackoverflowteams.com/c/expensify/questions/16989

[mallenexpensify]

Trying to test, awaiting email from test user. @thesahindia , can you also try to test? In case you're able to before me.

[thesahindia]

It is reproducible!

[mallenexpensify]

How do you get the email to send to you? I tried multiple times yesterday and checked that notifications were set to immediate.

Do you think this can be worked on externally @thesahindia ?

[thesahindia]

Yesterday, when I sent the message, I received the email within a few minutes. However, when I tried today, the email took a few hours to arrive. I didn't do anything specific

I think this can be external.

[melvin-bot[bot]]

Current assignee @thesahindia is eligible for the External assigner, not assigning anyone new.

[mallenexpensify]

Thanks @thesahindia , marked External, I checked a couple times today, never got the email/s for some reason.

[melvin-bot[bot]]

📣 It's been a week! Do we have any satisfactory proposals yet? Do we need to adjust the bounty for this issue? 💸

[mallenexpensify]

Checking on internally https://expensify.slack.com/archives/C01SKUP7QR0/p1719001928198269?thread_ts=1719001866.214179&cid=C01SKUP7QR0

[melvin-bot[bot]]

@mallenexpensify, @thesahindia Uh oh! This issue is overdue by 2 days. Don't forget to update your issues!

[melvin-bot[bot]]

Upwork job price has been updated to $500

[mallenexpensify]

Bumped to $500 to get some eyes. Also trying to reproduce again with sending messages to two accounts so I can reply.

[jp928]

This seems like a BE problem. I could see the message in the payload if reload the App.

[jp928]

Proposal

Please re-state the problem that we are trying to solve in this issue.

The chat is not showing Unread messages when replied to a chat via email

What is the root cause of that problem?

Websocket doesn't send the onyx message to update.

What changes do you think we should make in order to solve the problem?

Send the message to FE with following format

  "onyxMethod": "merge",
            "key": "reportActions_",

What alternative solutions did you explore? (Optional)

NA

[thesahindia]

This seems like a BE problem. I could see the message in the payload if reload the App.

Thanks for letting us know. @mallenexpensify, let's get someone from the internal team.

[mallenexpensify]

Checking in #expensify-open-source about here

The chat is not showing Unread messages when replied to a chat via email appears to need to be backend. It seems important to fix but it's in #vip-vsb which is on hold. Please comment if you have feedback or if an internal engineer is willing to take it on.

[melvin-bot[bot]]

@mallenexpensify @thesahindia this issue was created 2 weeks ago. Are we close to a solution? Let's make sure we're treating this as a top priority. Don't hesitate to create a thread in #expensify-open-source to align faster in real time. Thanks!

[melvin-bot[bot]]

@mallenexpensify, @thesahindia Uh oh! This issue is overdue by 2 days. Don't forget to update your issues!

[mallenexpensify]

Checking in #engineering-chat (thought it was #engineering when I posted :ohnohthing) https://expensify.slack.com/archives/C03TQ48KC/p1719964100569379

[techievivek]

I looked into the backend code and it seems we are intentionally marking the message as read. I wanted to confirm this behavior. If a user has replied via email, they have seen the message sent by the other user, correct? In this case, do we still need to show the message as unread in the LHN?

[mallenexpensify]

Yeah, from the steps in OP, I think so (I tried to reproduce multiple times without luck though).

Steps

• Go to staging.new.expensify.com
• Initiate a DM to B
• As B reply by email

Expected Result: The reply displayed as unread message in LHN

so.. user A sends message to B, B replies via email, chat is not showing bold for user A.
This would mean there's no other way for user A to have seen the message from user B, right?

[techievivek]

Investigating this, here is a request logs https://www.expensify.com/_devportal/tools/logSearch/?#query=request_id:(%228a015512ad7ec58a-SEA%22)+AND+timestamp:[2024-07-08T15:08:19.672Z+TO+2024-07-08T17:08:19.672Z]&index=logs_expensify-029291, it is using the addComment command so unsure why we are not queuing updates for the receiver.

[techievivek]

We are queuing onyx update for the report but this is not getting pushed to the receiver.

[techievivek]

I am unable to reproduce this issue locally. I tried mimicking the process of sending a response via email, and the comment was added to the chat in real-time. I will check if I can reproduce this on the production or staging environment and might ask for a retest. This functionality is expected to work correctly since we are using the same method that the NewDot client uses when users respond to a chat, so everything should be the same.

[techievivek]

Ok, finally figured out the root cause here. Since replying through email is a different flow we need to ensure we create a createSendFetchableJob to push the updates to the receiver here https://github.com/Expensify/Web-Expensify/blob/fe0db5837a4825162ea4b3a79901a25748191a3f/lib/Mailgun/API.php#L1505

[melvin-bot[bot]]

@mallenexpensify, @techievivek, @thesahindia Whoops! This issue is 2 days overdue. Let's get this updated quick!

[techievivek]

This was fixed internally here: https://github.com/Expensify/Web-Expensify/pull/42742, so I am going to close this out now.