LEP/BetterBugSubscriptionsAndNotifications

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Revision 26 as of 2011-01-17 20:49:11

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Bug Notifications and Subscriptions: Less Noise, More Control

We should make subscribing to bugs something people want to do, not dread.

As an Ubuntu developer
I want control over my Launchpad subscriptions
so that I can get less noise and higher quality notices from Launchpad.

As an upstream developer
I want control over what information I get from Launchpad
so that I can easily find bugs related to my software.

There are two parts to this story -- less noise and more control.

So:

Rationale

Why now?

This story was taken up after consultation with Brian Murray, representing Ubuntu Platform QA. Launchpad's current focus is Getting Bugs Off Ubuntu. As a feature slot came open for development, we asked Brian what would help Ubuntu best manage the amount of bugs they have. He said, better bug subscribing and notifications.

Brian says, "people subscribe mostly to packages, but still get too much mail"

Stats from DB confirm packages are the most subscribed to: https://pastebin.canonical.com/29229/

What value does this bring?

Fixing bug notifications to be less noisy and bug subscribing to allow finer grained controls will allow people to manage the high volume of bugs against packages. This brings value to both Ubuntu and upstream developers by allowing people to better find bugs that interest them.

Stakeholders

Who will care about this work?

In particular, Ubuntu developers who are subscribed to large numbers of packages. In general, anyone who receives a lot of bug mail.

When did we last talk to these stakeholders?

Only bdmurray has been consulted so far, and only in preparation for this story.

Constraints

This Feature Provides

This Features Does Not Provide

I don't think this feature should allow unlimited configuration for notifications. By that, I mean, you could select to be informed of importance changes, but not certain notice changes, i.e. you would not be able to say "tell me when this bug changes from UNDECIDED" or "from WISHLIST to HIGH" or some other very specific choice.

We would have a couple of often demanded statuses pre-configured, i.e. HIGH and CRITICAL for structural subscriptions.

Note from kfogel: we might want to reconsider unlimited configuration. If we can get the UI right, this would be very powerful, because it would enable many different kinds of stakeholders to satisfy their needs. The notification requirements of Ubuntu packagers might be very different from those of, say, hardware manufacturers.

Workflows

Bug page

New subscription:

  • A user clicks "Subscribe"
  • An overlay appears with the various options
  • The user makes choices, clicks "subscribe" on the overlay
  • The user is subscribed to the bug with those options

Existing subscriptions:

  • A user clicks "Edit Subscription"
  • An overlay appears with the various options
  • The user changes the choices and clicks "Update subscription"
  • The changes take effect

Packages, Projects

New subscription:

  • A user clicks "Subscribe"
  • An new page is loaded with the various options
  • The user makes choices, clicks "subscribe" on the form
  • The user is subscribed to the bug with those options and redirected back to the bugs homepage for the object

Existing subscriptions:

  • A user clicks "Edit Subscription"
  • An new page is loaded with the various options
  • The user changes the choices and clicks "Update subscription"
  • The changes take effect and the user is redirected to the bugs homepage for the object

Distributions

  • Structural subscriptions would be disallowed except for a team (to allow mailing list subscriptions to all bug notices)

Mockups

lp:~gmb/+junk/subscription-widget-mockups/

Success

How will we know when we are done?

Bugs are at: story-better-bug-notification tag

How will we measure how well we have done?

Possibilities:

Useful info to have:

Notes

  • There are at least two axes here. One is "bugs I get told about" and the other is "actions on a bug that I get told about".
  • Bugs for this story are being tracked using the story-better-bug-notification tag.