Grouping email alerts for conversations

[jaimeiniesta]

Hi! We've enabled email alerts for conversations, so when a customer sends a message, we get an email.

This is handy, but it can result in a lot of individual emails in our inbox, all with the same subject A customer has sent you a message. It would be better if these emails were grouped together so here are some ideas:

1.- Change the subject to include the conversation ID, or customer email or name, like:

A customer (joe@example.com) has sent you a message

or

New message in conversation 2313h232324

2.- Avoid sending individual emails for each message, and instead hold them in the server and send them once per minute, including all the messages in the same email. We can get some inspiration on the new Oban Pro Chunk Worker.

What do you think?

[reichert621]

hey @jaimeiniesta!

I think it definitely makes sense to improve the subject line. I like the idea to batch messages to avoid too many individual emails, but I think some users want the emails to show up as quickly as possible (rather than e.g. debouncing by a minute), so I'd have to think about that a little more 🤔

[jaimeiniesta]

Sure, this could be configurable, to have it debounce more often.

[reichert621]

Ticket for subject line: #772

Will aim to get this done soon!

[reichert621]

@jaimeiniesta just wanted to let you know that the subject line improvements are done now!

[a8t]

Sounds like a simple Genserver could do the job for the second idea, if it's the way to go.

I'm wondering, do the notifications get sent even if a user is looking at the chat and responding at that moment? If so, maybe we could cut those down too. Not sure if we're already using Presence for this.

[jaimeiniesta]

Cutting down notifications for seen messages is a great idea too. Yes, a Genserver could do the job here.

[a8t]

Was trying to remember what article I read about batching with a Genserver and it was @reichert621's article haha! https://papercups.io/blog/genserver