August 19th Sprint Review
Sprint Goals:
- Federated Search for Hub/Node
- Group invitations by email
- New and updated notifications for group invitations and applicants
Federated Search for Hub/Node
Federated Search will be a config-based setting for Hub/Node clients that can be enabled that will allow their users to find content posted on any site on their infrastructure.
Users will have the option to search the current site they are on, or "Everywhere."
Searching "Everywhere" will return results from other site on the hub/node environment.
Notes:
There are a few complexities with federating search, particularly around handling permissions. Due to these complexities there are a few limitations to what can be searched using Federated Search at this stage.
- Only public content from other sites will be returned when searching "Everywhere"
- Certain search filters will only work for content on the current node, such as:
- Author
- Category
- Searching "Members" will not give users the option to search "Everywhere"
Group Invite by email
- By default, group owners, leaders or managers have the option to invite registered users to a group by searching and selecting their usernames.
- A new permission has been added to the Groups add-on that will allow group owners, leaders & managers to invite users to groups via email.
- This allows you to invite both registered and unregistered users to join a group. This is a great CTA to get unregistered users to join your community.
To invite a user to a group via email:
- Make sure your role has the Email Invitations.Add permission enabled
- Go to your group and select "Invite Members" from the options menu
- Your invitation modal should now include a "Emails" section
- Enter a comma seperated list of email addresses
- Confirm you have permission to use the email addresses provided
- Click "Invite"
- Users will receive our Group Invitation notification
Registered, logged-in users will be able to accept or reject the invitation as they normally would.
Unregistered users will be asked to create an account, and confirm their email address before they are able to accept the invitation.
New & updated notifications for Group Member management
- This sprint we've devoted some time to adding to and improving our notifications that pertain to group member management.
- This was done as a professional service for an Enterprise client, but has been implemented in core so that all of our customers can benefit from these enhancements.
- Group member management involves:
- Inviting users to groups
- Approving or rejecting group applicants
- Until today, users could only be notified that they've been invited to a group via private message.
- This sprint we have:
- Improved the group invitation notification
- Added a notification for group applications
- Added a notification for applicant approvals
Improved notification for group invitations
Current behaviour:
- Until today, users were only notified by private message that they've been invited to a group.
- This means that when I was invited to a group I would receive a notification letting me know that someone has sent me a message:
- I would then need to check my PMs to see that I've been invited to a group
Updated behaviour:
- Now, users have a notification preference where they can enable pop up and/or email notification for group invitation
- When I am invited to a group I will receive a dedicated email and/or pop-up notification letting me know I've been invited to a group.
- This allows me to immediately know which group I've been invited to, and immediately links me to the group where I can accept or reject the invitation
Notification for group applications
Current behaviour:
- Users can apply to join Private groups if they wish to become a member.
- Group owners, leaders and managers need to approve these requests before users can join the group.
- Until today, group owners, leaders and managers were not able to receive notifications when members applied to join their group.
- This means that if I managed a private group, users could apply to join, but I would need to manually check each group I manage in order to know if I had any pending requests.
Updated behaviour:
- If I have the Groups.Add permission, I have a new notification preference:
- When users apply to join my group, I will receive a pop-up and/or email notification letting me know that my group has a pending request
- From the notification I am linked to the groups homepage where I can accept or reject pending applications.
Notification for Group applicant approvals
Current behaviour:
- When I have applied to join a group, I need to wait until my request is approved before I can join the discussions and events in a private group.
- In order to know if my membership request has been approved, I need to manually check the "My groups" section of Groups in order to see if any new groups appear. I don't have any way to know which groups i've applied to, or which requests have been approved.
Updated behaviour:
- There is now a notification preference users can enable to be notified when their applications have been approved.
- When a group owner, leader or manager approves any of my group membership requests I will receive an email and/or pop-up notification letting me know that my membership has been approved.
- I am linked directly to the group so I can start consuming and contributing content in the group.
Deployment:
2020.017
The following features will be delivered with release 2020.017:
- Group invitations by email
- Improved Group invitation notification
- Group applicant notification
- Group membership approval notification
Release 2020.017 will be released according to the following schedule:
- Staging: Tuesday, August 25th
- Public: Monday, August 31st
- Enterprise: Monday, September 7th
Elastic Search
Federated Search will be deployed along with our Elastic Search updates later on this year, exact dates are TBD. This release is being coordinated with Ops, and will include:
- Member Search
- Places Search
- Federated Search
- Many search improvements