Usability: Group subscription / membership

[josereyero]

From a user POV the whole group/space subscriptions / membership is pretty confusing:

• There's a 'Subscribe' option on the to right drop down, in the Space
• Then on the 'All spaces' tab there's 'Request group membership' but 'Unsubscribe from group' (Also no feedback on whether subscription has been approved or not)
• On the user dashboard there's
  • a Groups tab that shows nothing,
  • a 'Spaces' one that shows groups of which the user is member,
  • A 'Settings' one that shows notification options for Spaces to which user is 'Subscribed' (not member)
  • A 'Subscribed content' one that shows error atm (psql I guess)

So there's mixed Group/Space Subscription/Membership terminology all around the place.

We should add some consistency here, some ideas:

• Replace 'Group' by 'Space' everywhere
• Unify 'Subscription' and 'Membership' if possible (Remove subscription options, add / remove subscription together with membership or do not allow subscription without membership).
• Either fix or remove the 'Subscribed content' option.

[marcosmenendez]

Agree with simplification. A couple of comments:

• Instead of "Space" or "Group" I would call them Areas (unifying both into one). Space is an OA technicality
• Membership should refer to company ownership only. Users are members/owners of the company. Nothing to do with OA, so we should simply talk about subscribe or "follow" a specific Area, discussion, etc. Agree on unifying both actions into one

[josereyero]

Resolution (To be implemented), after Skype conversation:

• Automatically subscribe/join all new users to all 4 spaces
• Remove all "Subscribe / Join to Anything" options.
• Trim down Notifications feature/group, get rid of Groups / Teams (Thus only users subscribed to the specific post and individual users will be notified by mail. We can keep it for administrators though)

@marcosmenendez, please, let me know whether I've got all these points right.

Changed priority to "Normal"

[marcosmenendez]

Right!

[josereyero]

I've been going through all the related options -there are quite a few of them- and I think there are a few more things we need to define.

First some findings:

• User "pertenence" to group can be made easier (Just Join and Leave options, no approval needed) by tweaking permissions.
• The's some redundant UI, will just be gone, won't ever get into those.
• Users not belonging to groups can be allowed to post (or any other permission members have) in that group.
• This leaves us with two main join/subscribe pages (see screenshots):
  1. "All Spaces" page to join/leave space/group (It says "subscribe" but it can be renamed to "join"), also simplified to get rid of one of the tabs. http://local.thegooddata.org/spaces
  2. User's Notifications options, a bit too complex UI for a) Subscribe to group updates and b) How / when to get emails for each group.

Which means:

• There's no need to automatically subscribe (aka join) users to spaces for they to do anything. But by subscribing them they will get notified when someone else creates a post and selects the group in the Notifications options on the right.
• If subscribing users automatically to groups, we cannot skip the page (2.), otherwise they have no option to stop receiving emails.

What we need to decide/define: A. What does "pertenence to a group" means? (Be able to post, get notified, etc...) B. If we make joining a space the same as "subscribing" (to posts in the group), then we can skip page (2) completely, but I don't think it is a good idea leaving them with no email options, we could simplify that page instead. But anyway they can always "leave" the group if the want no notifications.

The case is like this: If we force users to "join" a group to be able to post, then they cannot stop receiving emal notifications for that group. This may be desirable or not, I just don't know.

I would consider adding on top of the Join/Leave space option, a per user mail killswitch for "Not receiving mail notifications at all". Then simplify the Notifications options and get rid of "Space preferences"

C. We need to set sensible defaults (that user may or may not be able to change, depending on the above options) for:

• Digest grouping: One digest per space / One digest for all
• Notification method: Daily email / Weekly email

Screenshots for 1) "All Spaces" 2) User's notifications settings

[josereyero]

Waiting to clarify the points above, but done some progress towards simplification:

• Simplified UI, fixed permissions so users can subscribe / unsubscribe to groups.
• Workflow simplification, now Subscribing to a Space === Subscribing to that Space's notifications
  • Implemented by TGD Notifications module.
  • Simplified user Notifications settings, now global single setting for all groups
  • See screenshot, compare with previous one.

(All this Deployed to PRE)

[josereyero]

To do (after skype meeting):

• Add message / link: "Subscribe to this group to be able to post..." (Ok to subscription = being able to post)
• Replace all Group/Space terms by ...Area? (TBD)

[marcosmenendez]

Area is fine

On Tuesday, September 23, 2014, Jose Reyero notifications@github.com wrote:

To do (after skype meeting):

• Add message / link: "Subscribe to this group to be able to post..." (Ok to subscription = being able to post)
• Replace all Group/Space terms by ...Area? (TBD)

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/thegooddata/social/issues/16#issuecomment-56569034.

Marcos Menendez hangout: marcos@thegooddata.org skype: marcosmenendez tel: +44 (0)20 3289 0009 twitter: @marcmenen https://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=marcmenen Unit 1, 82 Clerkenwell Road London EC1M 5RF

[josereyero]

Done with renaming Done with message, see screenshhot. Note:

• This works only for discussion posts. For the rest (docs, events, etc..), it seems there's only a global "post comments" permission. Implementation / deployment notes:
• Added a Panel/Pane (TGD/Subscribe to area). that can be used for other pages too later on..
• For renaming Group/Space to Area, done partly with alter hooks (see tgd_notifications, tgd_ui) and used string overrides for the rest. This adds a new file (sites/all/modules/tgd/string_overrides.php) that needs to be included from settings.php. THIS NEEDS MANUAL UPDATE FOR DEPLOYMENT.

All this is running in PRE, ready for deployment to PROD .

[josereyero]

Released to PROD.