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vBulletin.com Blog Entry: PT Feature Spotlight: Project Subscriptions, Assignment Notification
Author: Mike Sullivan
Published: 17th June 2008 07:03 PM


The recent Project Tools Update announcement has been received well. Today, I'm just going to expand on some of the features listed in the announcement, to give you an idea of what exactly is covered and what it looks like. If you don't like it, let us know. :)


Project Subscriptions
This was the first or second most requested feature. The implementation is mostly like forum subscriptions, as you'd probably expect. Despite the name, users actually subscribe to a specific issue type (or multiple issue types) within a project. You might be interested in getting a daily update about the bugs, but not about any features.

The form to subscribe is simple enough:

This doesn't directly let you set different subscription levels to different issue types, though you can do that by visiting the page multiple times.

Project subscriptions are managed on the same page as issue subscriptions (in the User CP):

A simple enough display. You can see that it shows last post info for that each specific issue type, rather than folding it together for the entire project. (Yes, full last post information.)

Something else you might notice: management is done with check boxes and a drop-down at the bottom. In PT 1.0, we experimented with having a drop-down for each issue subscription. This didn't work particularly well, so both project and issue subscriptions use this method now.

As I mentioned at the beginning, this implementation is very much like forum subscriptions. This means that the options are a daily or weekly digest format:
Quote:
Subject: "Bugs" Update in "Project Name" Project

Dear User Name,

You are subscribed to "Bugs" posted in "Project Name". There have been 0 new issues(s) and 1 updated issue(s) since the last digest.

http:///project.php?do=issuelist&pro...&issuetypeid=b ug

The following issues are new:


The following issues have been updated with new posts:
************
Issue Title
http:///project.php?issueid=17
Started by: test user
Last post: Jun 17th 2008 03:54pm


All the best,
Forum

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To manage your issue and project subscriptions, click here:
http:///projectpost.php?do=managesubscriptions


Notification of Issue Assignment
If project subscriptions weren't the most requested feature, this was. It notifies a user via email when they are assigned to an issue by someone else. There have been some requests to send a private message instead of an email for this, but for now it will stand at email--if you'd prefer sending by PMs, please let us know and we can re-evaluate.

Quote:
Subject: Assigned to Issue "Issue Title"

Dear User Name,

You have been assigned to the issue "Issue Title" by Other User.

http:///project.php?issueid=16

Project: Project Name
Issue Type: Bug

All the best,
Forum
As you'd expect, if you assign yourself to an issue you won't be emailed. However, you will in all other cases, regardless of the state of the issue.

Users will not be able to control whether or not they receive an email on assignment. It is an admin-specified option per project. This method was chosen to keep the power of notification within the hands of the management team; the manager would want to make sure that you know you were assigned to an issue. :)




That's it for this time. Next time we'll expand on some of the other features mentioned in the announcement... or maybe even cover some new ones!



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