Review of notification rules to allow customisation

[giorgiofraschini]

Proposal

The current system of notification rules provides for very limited for the users. Along with the possible modifications to wording, the only available selection in advanced settings seems to be the number of days after which to notify users of the presence of unread reports.

This issue is to launch a discussion on possible developments of the software regarding the possible customizable advanced settings on notifications. I am listing here a few proposals for modifications:

1. Now a single notification is sent for a new message and no following notification e-mails if the existing unread messages are not read. There is then a weekly reminder for unread reports/messages on reports.
   We could provide a box in advanced settings called “Receive all notifications”, to allow users to receive a single notification per action by whistleblowers/other recipients.

2. Expiration of reports. Notifications are sent from the 7th day before the deadline of the report, one per day. Users can modify the number of days before the deadline of the report; in any case the notifications are sent each day until the deadline.
   In the box where it is written the number of days, we could instead provide for a different setup that could provide the number of days before the deadline, when to send notifications (they could be consecutive days, intervals of days or separate days, eg. 7-1 or 30, 7, 1).

3. Comments from other recipients. Notifications are sent for new comments and attachments from both whistleblower and other recipients.
   We could provide the possibility to select if the recipient wants to receive notifications from all the users or the whistleblower only.

Motivation and context

• Existing discussions on the notification topic show the need to provide for different options for the user (e.g. Notification Rules for unread reports #3796 and Options suggestions to disable reminder emails #4067).
• Some users miss notification e-mails and need to wait for a week before being sent a reminder.
• Some recipients in the same channel find problematic and confusing receiving a different number of notification e-mails, depending on who has open previous messages or not.
• Some recipients do not want to receive notification e-mails for messages from other recipients (not the whistleblower) and following reminders, because they have agreed “outside the platform” on how to reply to the whistleblower and find confusing receiving notifications for a message they have an agreement on.

[giorgiofraschini]

Please @evilaliv3, if you could tag relevant users that may be interested in commenting this issue.

[evilaliv3]

Thank you @giorgiofraschini

I acknowledge that the topic is very important and the current situation is very unsatisfying.

Your ticket is very well stated and i agree we should try to look at the problem analyzing all these details and then try to find ways to do implementations simple to be implemented as algorithm and usable to be configured by users.

I would keep this ticket for discussing extensions to configurations on the Recipient side to enable them to select if they want to receive any email, only update notifications, eventual expiration or no email at all, and discuss with the community the feedback they received on this matter.

In the next days instead i will precisely create a ticket about possible extensions to configurations on the Admin side specifically in relation to the Expiration implementation. It is very unsatisfying to send an email every day since the expiration like now, especially when data retention policies are very long (1year); you don't want in this case to send an email for 15 days, every day for example, that is the current situation if you set the system to send emails 15 days before expiration. I will create this ticket shortly.

\cc @larrykind @susannaferro @danielvaknine @elbill