Request for Mail Notification Enhanced

This is a FeatureEnhancementRequest - requesting the core components of MailNotificationEnhanced are included in the official TWiki code for DakarRelease. Most users I have seen understand well the syntax and appreciate it very much, myself included !!

Please see also the discussion in : UninitializedValueInMailNotificationEnhanced

-- KeithHelfrich - 29 Dec 2004

Thanks for the enquiry.

As per ConsolidateNotification, I doubt very much that any notification system other than MailerContrib will be included in DakarRelease.

In my view, competing, incompatible efforts have gone too far: they leave administrators with an uncomfortable decision about which variant to take - its uncomfortable to the extent that the variants are based on different codebases.

If your employer (C0ca Cola?) wants functionality in MailNotificationEnhanced to be incorporated into Dakar perhaps they can supply skills and effort to help consolidation and rationalisation to happen. We can give guidance as to what needs to be done.

OpenSourceFunding and GettingPaidToDevelopTWiki give some guidelines of how your firm can influence others efforts are directed.

Cheers.

-- MartinCleaver - 30 Dec 2004

Martin : a fair and balanced reply, thanks. I admin a TWikiSite at two companies (C0ca-Cola incl.) and a third twiki from my home for use by friends & neighbors - all are using MailNotificationEnhanced. I understand the motivations behind ConsolidateNotification .. and I have followed the discussion there with interest for some time.

In fact, recent problems with UninitializedValueInMailNotificationEnhanced after the c0ca-cola upgrade to CairoRelease only illustrates the problems with notification mechanisms incompatible with the TWiki core. So fully, I support your effort to ConsolidateNotification.

Still - on bended knee - I submit this request for inclusion of more features from MailNotificationEnhanced in MailerContrib, only because they are so useful. For example, MailerContrib does not yet deliver these useful perks that MailNotificationEnhanced does supply :

• Per WEB topic exclusion
• Include / exclude based on topic name, topic content, topic author
• Keep a copy of sent mails
• Do not send mail, just show what notify would do
• Find email address in LDAP (if LDAP defined)

All very useful features we've grown accustomed to and would miss when absent.

To answer your fair suggestion that C0ca-cola sponsor the skills, time & energy .. to that I can only respond I wish. The coke TWikiSite is constantly just barely hanging on as a useful but pet project of yours truly. Widespread adoption by my colleagues has been slow but improving (thanks mostly my own persistence and to ever increasing funcitonality). Yet the company is still far from accepting TWikiCulture as a way of life - and therefore far from supplying skills, time, or money to the cause.

This leaves me and my own free time .. if I weren't such a novice with perl. Basic TWikiDebugging is about the best I can do with deep & dirty perl code. I'd like to learn more, but I'm a long way from the day when I can contribute in any real way.

Lastly, this leaves us with PatrickNomblot .. author of the infamous MailNotificationEnhanced. Perhaps he or his company have the incentive to supply the effort to help make this happen.

-- KeithHelfrich - 30 Dec 2004

Thank you again Keith. I will maintain MailNotificationEnhanced, as long I will work for Schlumberger / Parkeon and more if I can but I would really prefer to get a contributed solution.

It took long time for me to found an open and powerfull solution but I think that I get it now. I am quite sure that the best solution is a plugin like interface extension for WebNotify parameters. As far as I understand, this is not the solution described in mailContrib.

Here is an example of what WebNotify could look in the solution I suggest :

• PatrickNomblot %NOT{TOPIC="WebNotify" TEMPLATE="simple" SMTP="pat@nomblot.org"}%
• KeithHelfrich %IN{TOPIC="*request*" TEMPLATE="simple" DEPTH="3"}%
• MartinCleaver %IN{TEMPLATE="simple" PERIOD="0"}%
• KeithHelfrich %NOT{TEMPLATE="*bug" PERIOD="3600"}%

etc...

There are many advantages to give enhanced parameters in this way :

• same syntax as in any TWiki plugin
• can define new parameters
• easy to build a mail notify plugin
• make it possible to get list of matched topics in topic view mode
• etc...

note that smtp is already given in users home, getting to location for that might create confusion...

MailerContrib could simply offer per default parameters analyse, topic search mechanism and basic functions and interface to TWiki libraries and configuration.

I'm sorry to give this idea so late but I am convinced that this kind of interface for TWiki notification is really the best choice for all.

-- PatrickNomblot - 06 Jan 2005

Note that %IN{...}% and %NOT{...}% could be simply replaced by %SEARCH{... + extra parameters}% . A %SEARCH{...} command via mail notify woud be then simply overwrite of %SEARCH{...}%

-- PatrickNomblot - 07 Jan 2005