Send Users Email Notifications

[gmeben]

Problem/Why

Currently, there are no communication channels defined for sending notifications to users via email.

Goal/What

Figure out how to send notifications to users in the following ways:

• An individual user via email
• Multiple users via email

Solution/How

Research how to setup notifications with email. https://laravel.com/docs/8.x/notifications

To Do / Acceptance Criteria

• [x] Research the setup of email based notifications.
• [x] Document findings and recommendations and share it with the team.

[gmeben]

Since yesterday I've discovered a way to send email notifications that's far simpler than the method I previously discovered that involves using the EventServiceProvider with events ands listeners.

Here's how it will work with each new notification we will create:

1. Add 'mail' to the array within the via() method of the pertinent notification class
2. Configure the toMail() method within this class as necessary
3. Inside the GraphQL mutation class in Laravel, notify users using either the Notify facade or the $user->notify() method

[gmeben]

After discussing with the team during team time yesterday, we've decided that utilizing the event/listener pattern would be better suited for notifications as the improved modularity of events and listeners will afford better code organization. With the other pattern, notification logic (content and recipients) can muddy mutation classes or other files that aren't primarily concerned with notifications. Also, we can still leverage the toMail() and via() methods in notification classes with this pattern.