Hi all!
I've created an issue to work on having a better notifications preferences interface. IMO the current interface is difficult to understand and also it has too much switches.
That's why I opened the issue MDL-67508. I will try to explain here the improvement again.
Notification center
- Right now we have some notifications plug-ins, including: Web, Mobile, e-mail, Jabber (that IMO, can be removed from core), and 3rd party.
- The web plugin implies "receiving" the notifications in the bell drawer and also the notifications tab on the Moodle App.
- With my improvement we could remove the web plugin and make a greater hierarchy to enable disable notification per type. This is, if I enable "Assignment submission" notification I can then configure if I want to receive it by e-mail or mobile (or 3rd party). But it will also imply to always receive it on t he notification drawer on mobile and web. If I disable it then no notification of this category is receive it.
- This converts the notification drawer into a notification history / center. So all notifications are received there and then on other places. But you have all the notifications in one place at least.
Disable by plugin
- Enable/disable by plug-in. If enabled, you can configure notification by notification of the plugin, if disabled the user will know that they would not receive any notification via this plugin (ie. e-mail).
Remove Online/Offline
- Right now, If I'm not wrong, the system calculates that the user is online or offline like in the "Online users block". So it checks if an action is done in the last 5 minutes (admin can configure time).
- Having those settings the user has too many switches and it's difficult to understand.
- If the user goes away and don't close the session, the notifications send on the next 5 minutes can be lost if the user only receive them when Offline.
- I suggest to remove that or, at least have a 3 state option On/Offline only/Off. But I think it's better On/Off and that's it.
With this improvement:
- Issues about lost notifications can be reduced. All notifications are in one place.
- It's easier to change and understand what's going on.
- Mobile will display the notifications even if disabled on Mobile. (also the name of the plug-in has an issue).
This is a mock-up on how it could look like.
Facebook works that way, this is the screenshot of an example of one notification category called Events. The "Allow Notifications on Facebook" is that greater hierarchy I was talking of, if disabled, nothing bellow is shown.
I want to know what do you think and get your vote/comments on the issue.
Thank you for your time!!
