Active Queue of Direct Messages

[amartin3225]

It would be useful to have a way to track the on-going conversations I am having in private messages. Here are a couple examples where this would be useful:

• I start a private message with someone by asking him/her a question; with other chat solutions, I could leave that window open and if the person never responded, it would serve as a reminder that I need to contact them again to get the answer that I need. With Zulip, once I send the message to the person, there's no way for me to remember that I am actively waiting on a response from that person

• I have a long-running private message with someone about an on-going issue (e.g. over the span of a week or two); maybe there's only 1 message in the conversation per day; because of the infrequency of the messages, the user drops off of the list of most recent private messages under "Private messages" on the top left. Ideally this user could stay pinned somehow since it is an active (albeit slow) on-going conversation

Does Zulip provide a mechanism for handling this type of situation? I am thinking of some kind of "active queue" of private message conversations or the ability to "pin" users so they stay at the top and then you can dismiss once you are done with the conversation.

[timabbott]

There's a few ways we could handle this. One direction which would be easier than it sounds (because of existing functionality that already exists for embedded Zulip in another page) is the ability to pop out a small window for a specific private message thread. To what extent would something like this cover your use case?

Another is pinning ability in a buddy list feature like https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/236.

[zulipbot]

Hello @zulip/server-sidebars members, this issue was labeled with the "area: left-sidebar", "area: right-sidebar" labels, so you may want to check it out!

[amartin3225]

There's a few ways we could handle this. One direction which would be easier than it sounds (because of existing functionality that already exists for embedded Zulip in another page) is the ability to pop out a small window for a specific private message thread. To what extent would something like this cover your use case?

Could the pop out window be resized by the user? Would these windows work with Zulip Desktop and still handle desktop notifications the same way? I could see some users "popping out" all of their private message conversations to separate small windows in order to manage them this way - do you see a problem with that workflow?

Another is pinning ability in a buddy list feature like #236.

This would also work but is probably not ideal because I can see users wanting two different lists of pinned buddies:

• frequent contacts
• active conversations

If there's just one way to pin buddies, you wouldn't be able to easily distinguish between these two lists.

[vinitS101]

Could the pop out window be resized by the user? Would these windows work with Zulip Desktop and still handle desktop notifications the same way? I could see some users "popping out" all of their private message conversations to separate small windows in order to manage them this way - do you see a problem with that workflow?

This sounds a lot like how Facebook chat windows work. I think this would clutter the app a bit and I'm not sure how we could use this for the mobile app.

This would also work but is probably not ideal because I can see users wanting two different lists of pinned buddies:

* frequent contacts

* active conversations

If there's just one way to pin buddies, you wouldn't be able to easily distinguish between these two lists.

We could actually do something like this with the buddy list (on the right sidebar). Tabs like Starred and Active Conversations could be added. Any frequent/favorite contacts or pinned conversations can go here for easy access.

This would probably easy to do in the mobile app as well.

(As a sidenote: we could also add hotspots to these tabs so users know how to use them right off the bat)

[amartin3225]

We could actually do something like this with the buddy list (on the right sidebar). Tabs like Starred and Active Conversations could be added. Any frequent/favorite contacts or pinned conversations can go here for easy access.

This sounds like a great way to do it. To clarify, you'd have a button next to each buddy that lets you add them to one (or multiple) of the tabs?

(As a sidenote: we could also add hotspots to these tabs so users know how to use them right off the bat)

That would be a good idea too.