Software upgrade notification for sysadmin and non-sysadmin users

revive-adserver / revive-adserver

The world's most popular free, open source ad serving system. You can download the latest release at:

http://www.revive-adserver.com/download/

GNU General Public License v2.0

1.24k stars 565 forks source link

Software upgrade notification for sysadmin and non-sysadmin users #233

Open erikgeurts opened 10 years ago

erikgeurts commented 10 years ago

Revive Adserver displays a message notifying system administrators that a new version is available, the first time the log in after the notification was broadcast.

However, in many cases system administrators do not log in frequently, and thus they may not be aware that a new version has been released, possibly fixing bugs or resolving security vulnerabilities.

I would like to propose that the new version notification will also be displayed to manager users, when they first log in after the notification was received by their setup, so that they can alert their colleagues about it.

It addition, perhaps we should consider adding an (optional) feature to have an e-mail sent to the system administrator(s) notifying them about the availability of a new release.

The reason I'm proposing this, is because I've worked with clients who told me they would have upgraded to a newer version, if only they had realized it was available.

mbeccati commented 10 years ago

I believe that would require a major change in the way upgrade notifications are handled (i.e. from application variables to something else). Most if not all the clients I've been working with were actively using the admin user, but that might not be a representative sample.

A simpler approach would be to print the version and/or the availability of an upgrade somewhere (header/footer).

erikgeurts commented 10 years ago

That is actually exactly what I had in mind, displaying it somewhere near the logout link for example, or in a similar way as the message you see when you switch from one manager account to another manager account.

erikgeurts commented 5 years ago

I'd like to bring this back on the table, for inclusion in one of the future versions. This is my revised proposal:

When a software upgrade is available, we currently display a message to a sysadmin only. The message is shown only once, and is easy to dismiss.
I'm proposing to add a persistent notification that is shown to sysadmin users, across the top of the pages, alerting them to the availability of a software upgrade, and recommending them to upgrade at their earliest convenience.
I'm proposing to also show a notification to manager users, informing them that a software upgrade is available, and recommending them to contact their sysadmin or other technical team member to ask for the installation to be upgraded.
For those cases where the sysadmin is aware of the upgrade but is holding off for whatever reason, I'm proposing that we add a setting in the config file that the sysadmin can enable to prevent software upgrade notifications from being displayed to non-sysadmin users.

erikgeurts commented 1 year ago

For inspiration, this is what it looks like in WordPress for a user who does not have permissions to perform WordPress updates: