Simpler Notifications, but far from bug-free

The Notifications system is simpler, but far from bug-free. Earlier versions of Kerika tried to sort out notifications by category: all the project changes went into one category, all the document changes in another, and so on.

This was a good idea, as ideas go, but we didn't do a very good job of implementing it. There were two big problems that made the whole process kind of ugly:

• The process of sorting out the notifications didn't work very well, and when it did work, it didn't necessarily match the user's perceptions or expectations. For example, if a document gets added to an Idea Page, should it show up in the projects category, the documents category, or both?
• The UI didn't work very well: after a while the list of notifications got to be so long that the pop-up display was hard to use.

The new Notifications system is a step in the right direction, even if it isn't quite perfect. We have consolidated all the notifications into a single icon, which effectively side-steps the problem of categorizing them into project changes, document changes, etc. One big advantage of this is a cleaner appearance: fewer buttons and indicators on the screen to distract you from your work.

Unfortunately, we still have some work to do in terms of filtering out the excessive number of notifications that get sent. This isn't as easy as it might sound; as I explained in my last blog post, under the covers the Kerika software still manages permissions at the level of individual objects. When you add someone to a project team, you are actually adding that person to the permissions lists of each item on that page. Each of these events triggers its own notification, which leads to a lot of noise. And some unfinished business on our part...