Feature Idea: Notifications/event stream

[zefhemel]

Summary: What I really miss right now is the ability to see what is happening on boards I'm participating in. Have people updated descriptions, added comments? The only way to detect these things (even to see if a card has a comment or not) is to regularly open every single one and do a "visual diff." This is not great, it would be really cool to have a view where you can see recent changes to a board, or even get notified about ones about cards I care about.

How important this is to me and why: Pretty important. Right now I end up manually notifying people about my comments out of band (on Mattermost messaging).

Importance: High

Use cases:

1. Better monitor board activity
2. Know when people ask questions in comments

Additional context / similar features: Any examples of good implementations of this capability.

Any type of timeline view would be helpful, if I'd have to pick between notifications that are pushed to me (somehow) or just a stream view (question if this should be per board or per workspace — I'd say per workspace) I'd pick the latter. But notifications could also be posted (optionally, perhaps filtered) on the Mattermost channel the boards are connected to. That could be a "simple" MVP implementation perhaps. "Comment added to card X by Y."

[chenilim]

Thanks @zefhemel! We have a card to track this for v1, and a related card for @ mentions.

There's lots to figure out still, including:

• Should notifications be queued / batched?
• Who should receive notifications of changes to a board?
  • Subscribers / "followers"?
  • Only for cards you "own"?
• Should notifications be posts to a channel?
  • I think that would address a lot of default expectations, including the issues above and mobile push notifications.

cc @sbishel, @michaelgamble.

Open to input from others: What other notifications would you expect to receive?

[biva]

Hello! Indeed, that would be great to have a notification in the channel that the board corresponds to. But I agree with your questions: it might lead to too many notifications :( Maybe only new cards should be notified? Or when a card changes a specific parameter (for example when it's marked "Done")

[alerque]

Also here looking for a notification channel. At this point it looks like my only option is to setup a script with direct access to the database that regularly subscribes everybody to all cards. That's super cumbersome for large boards and teams!

@chenilim The links you dropped to tracking cards appear to have migrated to a different server and are no longer public.‌ Is there a tracking board where this can be followed or is this issue canonical?

[chenilim]

Thanks @alerque! Since my last comment, we've shipped Phase 1 of notifications:

• You can at-mention people in the card comments and description, and they will receive a notification from the Boards bot.
• You can follow individual cards, and be notified of changes to them
  • Being at-mentioned will also auto-follow you to the card

There is more work to do, as tracked by this card, and Phase 2 and 3 of the spec. This includes being able to follow boards.

As always, feedback is much appreciated! Would the remaining features in the spec address your needs? cc @wuwinson, @asaadmahmood.

[alerque]

Thanks for the fresh links. Yes phase 2 will cover my needs.

It seems this issue is roughly equivalent to the phase 2 sub-feature 9 (post card or board notifications in a channel) and my other issue #2421 is a match for phase 2 sub-feature 7 (allow users to follow boards).