Messages to users

[jochenklar]

Add messages through the interface to inform users about new features, maintainance, etc.

[m6121]

We are highly interested in this feature and plan to work on this. In our use case we are interested in two different aspects:

1. A messaging system that displays (short) notifications to the users:
   A first idea is to enable within the management frontend the configuration of notifications with: (1) title and message, (2) severity level (resulting in different colors), (3) sites and groups for whom this message will be displayed and (4) beginning and end date + time of the notification. After the configuration the relevant notifications will be displayed to users on the home page and or the projects overview. (This includes the creating of a new database table for the storage of the notifications)

2. A e-mail notification system that enables the notification of users:
   Here, our use case is that at some points we want to notify users, e.g. about updates or (critical) changes to the services via e-mail. Similar to the messaging system we though about an integration into the management frontend enabling the writing of mails with subject, message and the sites and groups that the mail should be sent to. Probably the sent mails could be stored to for the purpose of traceability of admin communication.

What do you think about these aspects and the suggested implementation?

[jochenklar]

Hi @m6121 , great! The first point could be done using the messages system which is already present in Django (and RDMO) https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/5.0/ref/contrib/messages/. The second part is also not that hard. I implemented a similar feature here: https://github.com/ISI-MIP/isimip-data/blob/main/isimip_data/caveats/admin.py#L130. I think both features should be part of the admin interface, right?

[sa-wetter]

I hope this issue is still being considered!

[jochenklar]

The draft for the new UI has a new style of tasks, which will replace the current overlays. The feature discussed here could be implemented in a similar way. In the end issues for the project, generic project tasks (overlays/onboarding) and maintainance messages would be displayed as cards in the dashboard.