thunderbird
Display current “push state” to the user
🎯 The objective
The aim of this project is to support increasing trust in emails being delivered to your inbox, by informing the user of errors that occurred while the app was waiting for new messages via push. Success is when receiving emails is perceived to be more reliable for users and users can take action in case their configuration is not according to their expectations.
🎒 Resources
ℹ️ List all relevant resources like BugZilla meta bugs, Figma files, Notion links and other files.
- Suggestions
- Show a message saying only a part of the folders are configured correctly
- Point to a place where they can see the status
- Stop push for misconfigured folders for a period of time
- Backend
- Record errors states in a format that it can be passed on to the UI
- Issues - #5594
🦮 Rules of the Road
🟢 In Scope
- Show indicator in foreground service notification when push isn’t working for all configured folders
- Show more detailed information when foreground service notification is tapped
🔴 Out of Scope
- In-app error notifications (see In-app error notifications )
🚧 Technical and/or Business Requirements
Project tasks
Cross-Functional Tasks
🎨 Design
- Develop a design for the screen to display push error details to the user
⁉️ QA
- Add new test cases for release smoke test
🤝 Support - Product
- Update SUMO article to better describe the new push error handling
User Stories
| Story | Description | Problem/Opportunity |
|---|---|---|
| Push service notification icon | As a user that hasn’t disabled/hidden the push service notification (“Waiting for new emails”), I want the notification to show when push is not working for all folders configured for push. | This allows the user to spot problems with push. Currently the app handles push errors by suspending push for the folder with the error for a certain amount of time. But this is not communicated to the user at all. |
| Push failure details via push service notification | As a user, once I realize there’s a push failure, I want to see details for the push failure(s) when tapping the push service notification. | This allows the user to see which folders currently fail to be checked via push. When available, an error message could be displayed to give the user an idea of what the problem is. |
Design/Implementation Notes
Currently we display the “push info” screen when tapping the notification. It allows configuring the push service notification and disabling push for all folders in all accounts. The latter functionality should probably be removed since undoing it involves opening folder settings for all folders previously configured to user push and enabling it again.
It would probably be good if taps on the push service notification won’t lead to different screens depending on whether there’s a push error. Details on the push failures could be included at the end of the “push info” screen.
A list of possible push errors:
- Unknown error (no further details available)
- Authentication error (usually comes with a server-provided error message)
- Server error (server closed the connection with an error message that could be displayed to the user)
- Connection error (the device has connectivity but the connection to the incoming mail server could not be established)
Per-folder push state:
- Active (push for folder is working)
- Waiting (there was an error and the app will wait a certain amount of time before trying to open a push connection for this folder again; it would probably be good to display to the user the time when the app will try to connect again)
Note: The case where the device has no connectivity at all is already handled by changing the title of the push service notification to “Sleeping until network is available”.
Current "push info" screen:
Just a suggestion, even tho I don't know if it fits into the scope of this epic. Maybe one could recommend the user, during the account setup or transfer from Thunderbird desktop, to enable push notifications for the inbox folder? Of course, only when the server supports it.
At least for me, I was very confused that I don't receive push notifications at all until I found this very helpful article in the Thunderbird KB: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/configure-push-email-thunderbird-android As a bare minimum, the setup wizard could link to this article and tell that it's possible to achieve instant notifications with Thunderbird Mobile as well.
Feel free to tell me if I should create a separate issue for this.
Oh, I found the according feature request: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/ask-to-enable-push-during-setup-default-to-push/idi-p/78702 Sorry for the noise
@major-mayer I think this would fit either in this issue or #8831, and if not there then in a follow-up we'd file from either of these epics. Thanks for your consideration!