Give project managers regular updates on their projects via email

[pantierra]

Keep the project managers updated. For example, send them stats of each project with current % mapped and validated, the change over the past week or month etc, # of invalidated tasks and so on.

[pantierra]

cc: @hotosm/major, @nrotstan

[anisin97]

Can we use Flask-Mail to send e-mails directly from the backend.

[pantierra]

@russdeffner What would be good content for this email. The current template contains the following

Hi [USERNAME]

 This is the weekly update for your project: [PROJECT_NAME]

 [PROJECT_NAME] had [NUM_CONTRIBUTIONS] contributions this week.

 [CONTRIBUTION_LIST]

[russdeffner]

It would be great if it also faces percentage change for mapping and validation; note that a negative change can be valid if for example more tasks are invalidated than validated over the week. =Russ

On Apr 22, 2019, at 6:46 AM, Felix D. notifications@github.com wrote:

@russdeffner What would be good content for this email. The current template contains the following

Hi [USERNAME]

This is the weekly update for your project: [PROJECT_NAME]

[PROJECT_NAME] had [NUM_CONTRIBUTIONS] contributions this week.

[CONTRIBUTION_LIST] — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

[fitoria]

Updated the message template to:

Hi [USERNAME]

This is the weekly update for your project: [PROJECT_NAME]

[PROJECT_NAME] had [NUM_CONTRIBUTIONS] contributions this week.

[CONTRIBUTION_LIST]

Activity Report:

Mapped Tasks: [MAPPED_TASKS] ([MAPPED_TASKS_PERCENTAGE])
Validations: [VALIDATED_TASKS] validated [INVALIDATED_TASKS] invalidated [VALIDATION_PERCENTAGE] change.

[pantierra]

ok, this looks already good. I'm wondering, @russdeffner, whether it is ok to send one email per week out to the project managers of published projects. This will probably encourage them to archive them faster :smile:

In order to have a full working solution, we will need some more things around the emails:

• [ ] Settings page to opt out of all emails and a way opt-out per project.
• [ ] Link in the email footer to the "email preferences".
• [ ] Per default, disable (or send to log) automatic messages. An let opt-in on certain deployments, like live. We probably don't want to send emails to project managers from the staging or a local developers' machines :imp:

[russdeffner]

I think the burden should be greater on the project managers and we should give them constant messages that they can’t turn off; weekly sounds good to me.

On Jun 5, 2019, at 7:41 AM, Felix D. notifications@github.com wrote:

ok, this looks already good. I'm wondering, @russdeffner, whether it is ok to send one email per week out to the project managers of published projects. This will probably encourage them to archive them faster 😄

In order to have a full working solution, we will need some more things around the emails:

Settings page to opt out of all emails and a way opt-out per project. Link in the email footer to the "email preferences". Per default, disable (or send to log) automatic messages. An let opt-in on certain deployments, like live. We probably don't want to send emails to project managers from the staging or a local developers' machines 👿 — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

[ghimiresushma99]

The template @fitoria suggested looks great. The number of tasks remaining to be mapped or validated might also be included so that managers get a clear idea of how much of the work is left.

Also, the frequency of these emails can be discussed further: weekly? biweekly? monthly? Maybe do it based on the priority of the project: for eg weekly update for an urgent project and monthly for low priority projects.

And I think that not allowing project managers to turn off the notifications would be a little too demanding. What we can do is: when someone is assigned project manager, by default, they will receive the email updates of the projects and will have to turn it off manually for every project, if they want to do so. This additional step will assist to meet the objective of holding managers accountable for their projects as well as allow the space for a turn-off notification feature.

[Aadesh-Baral]

Agree with @ghimiresushma99 about the frequency of emails based on priority. Notifications/Emails subscription feature on individual project levels might be a big work on the implementation side.

[petya-kangalova]

Discussion in the Tasking Manager Meet Up . Group suggestions:

1. Start small: only Project Creator/Owner receives notification
2. Ensure there is an option to toggle off- switch off notifications if you decide
3. Project Owners to get notifications about "active" projects - @Aadesh-Baral can you add more detail on your suggestion here
4. Start with notifications twice a month and get feedback from Project creators
5. To consult with users/project owners via tasking-manager- organization channel

Please do add if I have missed anything. Discussion came about the bigger picture about sharing data/stats. Project Managers, general public, etc. A discussion that we need to have but agreement to start small with the Project Creators notifications.

[Aadesh-Baral]

@petya-kangalova Here are my suggestions regarding this issue:

1. Send weekly project update emails to the project owner/manager if the project they are managing has some sort of activity in a given week. Activity can be setting a task as Mapped, Validated, Invalidated, and Bad Imagery. This will also filter out a lot of project and emails
2. Send project inactivity emails to project owners/managers if the project they are managing has no activity for a certain period like a month or two so that they are reminded of the project status with text like "There has been no project activity for your project [PROJECT_NAME] in the last month / two months"

[Aadesh-Baral]

Sneak peek of project update email template: @petya-kangalova we can share this with project managers on the tasking-manager-organization channel and ask if any additional stats can be useful on the email updates.

[Aadesh-Baral]

Regarding email frequency, I think we should move forward with a weekly schedule because users shouldn't be concerned about how frequently mail is received if they only receive one or two project update emails. However, if we extend the period, there is a chance that more projects will be active during that time, which could result in a high number of notifications being sent out simultaneously, which will clog users' inboxes and force them to ignore or disable notifications. Reducing the interval will result in more frequent but fewer notifications being sent.