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Old 3 Oct 2015, 08:20 AM   #1
FastAlex
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Android App Feaure Request - Push Notifications For Multiple Folders

I would like the capability to subscribe to push notifications for any (reasonably small) number of my folders, instead of just my Inbox.

I use Kaiten Mail on my Android phones for exactly this reason - even though I use + addressing to create aliases for all of my friends (personal domain/email) and customers (work domain/email), I have Kaiten set up so only a small subset of folders subscribe to new email push notifications in each domain - keeps me from getting overwhelmed by notifications while letting me keep up to date for the folders I REALLY care about. I have a LOT of folders in my personal domain, but only a phone screenful that I have set up for push notifications.

I'd be fine with using my desktop (Web) client to select the folders of interest rather than having to deploy this kind of feature to the phone app. Kaiten does it all on the phone, which means that if you create / move folders for which you want phone notifications, then you have to: open up the displayed folder list, refresh the folder list, find the new / moved folders, change their push setting, then close up the displayed folder list.

--
Alex
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Old 3 Oct 2015, 06:16 PM   #2
BritTim
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+1

There are many reasons power users want notifications for folders other than the Inbox. I suggest a new tick box Notify in Advanced->Folders->Edit
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Old 3 Oct 2015, 08:17 PM   #3
robn
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BritTim View Post
There are many reasons power users want notifications for folders other than the Inbox. I suggest a new tick box Notify in Advanced->Folders->Edit
Yeah, we know, and it is coming - it's something we want too.

It's not as simple as you suggest because it needs to be possible to set different notification settings for different devices. That means threading that information right through to the backend, where the notifications are generated.

It's not hard, as such, just fiddly, and involves a few different people so it can be a while before everyone is free to work on it. I'll probably start pushing it again early next year.
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Old 3 Oct 2015, 10:10 PM   #4
BritTim
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I can well believe there are some who would like different notification settings for their phone as opposed to desktop, for instance. However, I think most would be willing to choose compromise settings that work well enough.

Also worth considering, though there would be a small performance hit, is the following
  • Specify folders for which notifications should be generated on the Folders screen. Always send the notifications.
  • At the device level, provide some kind of notification filtering to suppress some of the notifications from actually appearing. This feature could be added later and provide more than just filtering by folder. For instance, you could filter by sender or importance.
This would allow the most important immediate need to be satisfied more quickly, with richer functionality available at a later stage.

Here is another idea, kind of wacky but I like it. Decide by convention that messages with a folder filing rule into __NOTIFY__ will cause such messages to generate a notification. This would facilitate both system and user generated notifications dependent on very flexible criteria. The most difficult question would be when to remove messages from __NOTIFY__. Perhaps, that could be a time interval (ie if notification has not been generated within 30 seconds, forget it).
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Old 3 Oct 2015, 11:11 PM   #5
robn
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For the longest time I was planning to do more-or-less what you suggested with a filter - a Sieve notify target of :device or something.

The problem with this, and with your other suggestion is that on Android, the "notification" that comes through the push channel actually has no data in it. It's just a signal to the app that it should wake up and see if there's anything new (this check is also triggered by a network change, so if you're coming out of an area with no coverage, you get your new mail immediately).

So the app now goes to the server to find out what changed since last time. At the moment, it only checks the inbox. Notifications for multiple folders means checking a whole bunch of them. I could ask for _everything_, but that's quite possibly an enormous amount of data (my "server notifications" folder, for example, which at peak times can get many tens of messages per minute).

Once we have JMAP it _might_ be possible to request notifications on a saved search, since it's possible to get a handle on a search and request changes since the last time. That might be a way to do notifications for ad-hoc groupings, though it still depends on getting the UI right. That's just an idea right now; I'm not making any commitment to actually doing it. I will investigate it at some point though.

So really, the only option is for there to be a specific set of folders that the user wants notifications for. If the app itself manages that, then we can have per-device folder settings. That requires new UI in the native app, and some small supporting code in the webapp. Or, we can do "global" notification settings, which is all done in the webapp, but is more work there. The backend work required is about the same.

We also need to consider what this feature looks like on the iOS app, which has a fundamentally different notification model.

Like I said, none of this is difficult, but it does touch a lot different parts of the system.
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Old 9 Jul 2017, 08:49 PM   #6
joe_devore
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Hey everyone! its now July of 2017 and FastMail
HAS STILL NOT added this feature....

it makes me wonder where their priories lie...
because do they really love their service and their "USERS"..??

my support ticket replies to me mentioned:
Sieve Notification Guide: FastMail app
Sieve Notify extension
neither were completely helpful as neither page mentioned the code needed to target specific folders when other rules sorted new mail into them...
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Old 9 Jul 2017, 09:01 PM   #7
BritTim
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Quote:
Originally Posted by joe_devore View Post
Hey everyone! its now July of 2017 and FastMail
HAS STILL NOT added this feature....

it makes me wonder where their priories lie...
because do they really love their service and their "USERS"..??

my support ticket replies to me mentioned:
Sieve Notification Guide: FastMail app
Sieve Notify extension
neither were completely helpful as neither page mentioned the code needed to target specific folders when other rules sorted new mail into them...
I am hopeful that, when the code cleanup facilitated by dropping the classic interface is complete, we may see a quicker rate of new feature introduction. We will see.
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Old 9 Jul 2017, 09:18 PM   #8
joe_devore
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yeah, maybe , hopefully lol
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