Centralized Multi-Channel Notification Settings + Persistent Mobile Notifications

[marcotuts]

Abstract

The platform should provide persistent web and mobile notifications to drive engagement and retention, with centralized learner settings for all notification types. This work builds on previous edX-ace work and more recently edX / 2U work on web notifications and settings.

Detailed Product Proposal

https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/OEPM/pages/4460249113/Proposal+Centralized+Multi-Channel+Notification+Settings+Persistent+Mobile+Notifications

Context & Background (in brief, if a Product Proposal is linked above)

Included in proposal confluence page

Scope & Approach (in brief, if a Product Proposal is linked above)

Included in proposal confluence page

Value & Impact (in brief, if a Product Proposal is linked above)

Learners:

:mobile_phone: Updates and reminders to learn on the go using the Open edX mobile apps to drive engagement and retention.

⚙️ Learners should be able to easily control notifications across all channels (web, email, mobile, etc) centrally in their account settings for both web and mobile apps.

:desktop: A similar notification inbox experience should also be available on the desktop for all open edX instances.

Educators:

Will be able to reconnect with learners off-platform through mobile applications as other modern tools drive much of their engagement.

Operator / Developer:

📊 We should align on a singular path for the platform’s notification architecture to benefit from shared velocity, benefitting from existing work in edX-ACE and recent work edX / 2U has developed in the notifications djangoapp in edx-platform.

Milestones and/or Epics

Stage 1 - Platform Technology Alignment for Notification Infrastructure
Stage 2 - Alignment on Product Concept Model for Notifications.
Stage 3 - Notification Settings (Web)
Stage 4 - Web Inbox
Stage 5 - Notification Settings (Mobile)
Stage 6 - Mobile Inbox
Stage 7 - Notification Category: Discussion
Stage 8 - Notification Category: Course Dates
Stage 9 - Notification Category: Platform / Account
Stage 10 - Notification Category: Other

Named Release

TBD

Timeline (in brief, if a Product Proposal is linked above)

TBD based on input

Proposed By

Schema Education

Additional Info

N/A

[github-actions]

Thanks for your submission, @openedx/openedx-product-managers will review shortly.

[ali-hugo]

@asma-ahmedd Just a quick update for you as the Coordinator on this ticket: I recently started work on the designs for the web notifications. The idea is to add them to the proposal when they are in a presentable state.

[ayub02]

@marcotuts @ali-hugo Infinity team in 2U is working on implementing "account-level" notification settings, along with embedding preferences into the account settings page. See the image below.

I'm wondering if "centralized learner settings for all notification types" is similar to that. If so, then maybe we should discuss and align so there's no duplicate effort.

Ignore the preference names in the image. Some are incorrect.

[ali-hugo]

@ayub02 Thanks for the update. It does sound like there's some overlap here.

Is Infinity also working on updating the notifications tray to reflect the change to account-level settings? That's what I've been tinkering with. Is there room for collaboration here? If so, I'd be happy to share my designs when they're further along.

[ayub02]

Is Infinity also working on updating the notifications tray to reflect the change to account-level settings?

Can you please elaborate this question? The notifications tray fetches notifications from the database, where they will be generated based on account level settings.

[ali-hugo]

@ayub02 Sorry my message wasn't clear; I think I misinterpreted the below image from your spec - I thought the tray only displayed notifications from one course at a time, but from further inspection, it seems to display messages from a range of courses - so please ignore my previous question.

I do have a few other questions though - hopefully these ones make sense!

• I know that the notifications tray is live on edX. Do you know if we can expect it to be available on Open edX sometime, and if so, when? (I'm not sure what this process normally looks like)
• @marcotuts's team has made some UX decisions for mobile notifications that could lend themselves well to the web experience. Is there any opportunity to borrow from their work to improve the UX on web?

[ayub02]

1. I have no idea what's involved in rolling out a feature to the community. I was under the impression that Axim picks and decides what to include. But since this has not been made part of any release, i'm not sure if that's true.
2. I'm interested in seeing those improvements. However, we have limited bandwidth for notifications work so i can't make any commitments.

As for the account-level settings work, here is a doc that outlines our plan: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PO0kxi_7VX_bbWgAsC-ulsx761hIyBxLeNUmFhUtTIU/edit?usp=sharing

Roughly 50% of the work has been done.

[ali-hugo]

@ayub02 Thank you for all that info. I've requested access to the Google Doc you shared.

I'll try to find out from the Core Product Working Group whether there is any plan to add notifications to Open edX. I hope so, because the notifications tray on edX looks great!

Thanks for helping me get a better idea of the context around this project.

[ali-hugo]

I'm interested in seeing those improvements. However, we have limited bandwidth for notifications work so i can't make any commitments.

@ayub02 The main question I wanted to raise is whether it’s necessary to include both account-level and course-level notifications. The mobile team at Schema (@sdaitzman @marcotuts) has chosen to implement account-level settings only, grouping notifications by type (see screenshot below). Their thinking was that, while separating notifications by course might reduce the number of messages displayed at a time, grouping them by type allows learners to deal with one concern at a time (e.g. upcoming assignments, or discussion responses).

Another thought I had was that having both account-level and course-level notifications might overwhelm users. Are there specific use cases that justify maintaining both levels of settings?

[ayub02]

@ali-hugo thats a good question. At the time we were building this, we weren't sure which features will prove useful. So I advocated for having flexibility built-in from the start. As opposed to making significant changes to the codebase later. That's why we have course-level settings. I also took inspiration from Canvas which has the same flexibility.

The preference center on mobile does not have a lot real estate as it does on the desktop. To account for that, maybe the mobile team can choose not to show the course level settings and show account level instead.

I also agree with grouping preferences into platform apps. That's another flexibility (platform-app level settings) that I advocated for, and it has now become useful. We don't show this toggle on the web anymore.

[ali-hugo]

At the time we were building this, we weren't sure which features will prove useful. So I advocated for having flexibility built-in from the start. As opposed to making significant changes to the codebase later.

@ayub02 Thanks for shedding more light on this. That approach makes sense. It’ll be interesting to see which settings users engage with most. It’s great to have the option to simplify things if some settings turn out to be unnecessary.