Improve way users are alerted to unread messages in Messages and Forums
GENERAL
TESTING
GENERAL
TESTING
Description
Although I've attached a design spec, I'm posting this as a point of discussion more than a solution.
Attached is a spec of a stop gap design improvement to the Unread Messages synoptic tool which fixes alignment of columns and recommends changing "none" to "--" for sites without the Messages tool, and "0" for those. At minimum, we would need to make these relatively easy changes before rolling this out locally.
On further reflection, though, this would benefit from a more robust redesign. It categorizes messages and forums threads by site, which is probably not important. People want to read all messages as they are likely to be personally important or urgent--which site it comes from doesn't really matter in their decision to read it. Forums messages run the gamut of importance, and info on which site it comes from is not that useful in judging how important that is--users need more context because it could be an assigned discussion question from instructors to students or a general question posed by anyone to be answered by anyone in the class.
Off the top of my head, a better design would treat these two types of communication in more specialized ways
1) Messages should emulate the OAE design--the header would include an envelope icon followed by "(<total number of unread messages>)." Unfortunately, that that is where the similarities to the OAE would end though, because currently, there is no universal inbox--the user would still have to check individual sites to read all messages (or at least mark them as read, since they may have already read them in their email). But at least we free up the real estate in My Workspace. This would have to be a 2.10 fix though, as it works best in the neoportal.
2) The synoptic tool would then look much as it does now, but just display links to Forums by site, skipping sites that had no unread messages. (If one eventually wanted to push this forward, this would evolve into an activity feed with the names of the topics and how many people responded, but that would require more major design and development work, and I have no idea how this would affect performance.)
3) Students need to know when Forums are casual and when they are assigned, but this is so tricky, we may just want to wait for the OAE. After all, where would they see this-- Assignments, Schedule, Announcements, or Lessons?
Depending on our local timing, we may decide that we need the short term synoptic tool fix. However, since users are alerted by email to activity in Messages and Forums, we may hold out for the long term fix, or maybe even the OAE. We will repost a subtask if decide to develop the short term fix, but others are free to develop around it, or push for better solutions.
Bulk closing issues that have not been updated since 2015 and earlier. Please reopen if this is still an issue and you have new information or if this is a feature you'd like to still have consideration for.
Keli Amann November 15, 2012 at 1:16 PM
While we did end up making this fix locally and could contribute it back, there are still issues with this fix. In particular, Unread Messages and Forums displays rows for every active site, even if those sites have neither the Messages or Forums tools, making it hard to draw attention to new activity
Therefore, we took it further and implemented this improvement to the synoptic tool this summer MSGCNTR-738: Unread Message and Forums widget should be organized by message type, not show sites without any activity.
If you think it is better, please vote for that one instead.
Although I've attached a design spec, I'm posting this as a point of discussion more than a solution.
Attached is a spec of a stop gap design improvement to the Unread Messages synoptic tool which fixes alignment of columns and recommends changing "none" to "--" for sites without the Messages tool, and "0" for those. At minimum, we would need to make these relatively easy changes before rolling this out locally.
On further reflection, though, this would benefit from a more robust redesign. It categorizes messages and forums threads by site, which is probably not important. People want to read all messages as they are likely to be personally important or urgent--which site it comes from doesn't really matter in their decision to read it. Forums messages run the gamut of importance, and info on which site it comes from is not that useful in judging how important that is--users need more context because it could be an assigned discussion question from instructors to students or a general question posed by anyone to be answered by anyone in the class.
Off the top of my head, a better design would treat these two types of communication in more specialized ways
1) Messages should emulate the OAE design--the header would include an envelope icon followed by "(<total number of unread messages>)." Unfortunately, that that is where the similarities to the OAE would end though, because currently, there is no universal inbox--the user would still have to check individual sites to read all messages (or at least mark them as read, since they may have already read them in their email). But at least we free up the real estate in My Workspace. This would have to be a 2.10 fix though, as it works best in the neoportal.
2) The synoptic tool would then look much as it does now, but just display links to Forums by site, skipping sites that had no unread messages. (If one eventually wanted to push this forward, this would evolve into an activity feed with the names of the topics and how many people responded, but that would require more major design and development work, and I have no idea how this would affect performance.)
3) Students need to know when Forums are casual and when they are assigned, but this is so tricky, we may just want to wait for the OAE. After all, where would they see this-- Assignments, Schedule, Announcements, or Lessons?
Depending on our local timing, we may decide that we need the short term synoptic tool fix. However, since users are alerted by email to activity in Messages and Forums, we may hold out for the long term fix, or maybe even the OAE. We will repost a subtask if decide to develop the short term fix, but others are free to develop around it, or push for better solutions.