An enhanced but simple notification system

Please read ConsolidateNotification and MailerContrib

Based on work of PatrickNomblot on a MailNotificationEnhanced I have worked on a simpler notification system for our Intranet users at ILOG : wiki-mailnotify-ng-0.3.tar.gz

Compared with Patrick's system, this system adds :

• a simpler syntax for per-topic notif settings
• a completely refactored code for notif settings API
• a new "Subscribe" button on all topics of the Wiki
• backward compatibilty with current TWiki system

The user settings syntax is much simpler mainly due to the removal of not usefull feature for my users : per user mail templates and complex topic patterns.

I have also removed the LDAP support. I think this is an orthogonal feature that need integration with the whole TWiki system (for user authentication for instance).

Planned features are :

• adding a [NOTMINE] keyword to suppress notification on own changes
• notification on a complete topic tree (by a MyTopic/** syntax)

Here is a copy of part of the doc page provided in the archive :

An extended syntax

Using the new syntax of registration in the WebNotify topic, users can now specify which specific topics they want to monitor. The syntax has been extended to accept a list of topics just after the wiki name (or optionnaly after the user email address), as shown by the following examples :

   * Main.JohnSmith : FooBar, NextMeeting, FunnyStuff, WebHome
   * Main.BobWhite - bob.white@foo.com : TeamNews

The topic list follows the user name on the same line. It is separated from the user name by a colon character (:). Topic names are separated by spaces commas or a mix of them.

Topic names may use wildcards characters to match multiple topics.

The [NEW] keyword may also be used in the topic list to be notified on creation of topic even if its name doesn't match other items of the topic list.

In the following example, the user will be notified on changes on all topics whose name begins with "Foo" or ends with "Bar" or is exactly "FunnyStuff" or any topic that has just been created (whatever its name is).

   * Main.JohnSmith : Foo*, *Bar, FunnyStuff, [NEW]

The topic list is optionnal; by default a notification is sent for changes on all topics (see [[#BackwardCompatibility][Backward Compatibility]] section).

A simpler user interface

This enhanced notification system is completed by another new feature : the Subscribe feature. A Subscribe button has been added to the tool bar of each page (alongside the edit, attach or new buttons).

This new button, when clicked, automatically registers this topic in your notification settings for the current web. If you were already notified for changes on this topic, no modification is made to your settings, otherwise your settings are updated with this new topic name.

To unregister for notification on a specific topic, users, as before, must directly modify their settings in the WebNotify topic.

-- NicolasDuboc - 10 May 2004

The MailerContrib implements everything except the [NEW] and is distributed as a supported contrib. I added the extra functionality of this system as WIBNIFs on the MailerContrib. The plan of record is for that contrib to take over from mailnotify.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 11 Oct 2004

- Hi Nicolas,

Can this be packaged as a plugin? -- MartinCleaver - 11 May 2004 - 17:10

- I don't very well know the plugin architecture of TWiki. But it can surely be packaged as a plugin. -- NicolasDuboc - 18 May 2004 - 07:05

I have updated the distrib for Cairo use. About Pluginization: I think it is not to be done as long as adding a plugin adds runtime overhead to viewving pages. As it is this addon is called only when the cron-run scripts are launched.

-- ColasNahaboo - 05 Jan 2005

I debugged two things:

• MailNotify.pm
  When calling TWiki::Access::checkAccessPermission, the second argument $user should be "$TWiki::mainWebname.$user"
• NotifSettings.pm
  When calling &TWiki::Store::readTopic, the third argument should be true. There might be read-restricted webs.

-- KaoruMaeda - 15 Jun 2005

(Thanks Kaoru for the fixes, you are right)

Please add an entry like Disallow: /wiki/bin/monitor in your robots.txt, otherwise intranet search engines will try to index it generating a lot of "page not found" errors in the logs.

-- ColasNahaboo - 15 Sep 2005

Will there be a version for Dakar Release ?

-- MarkusBajones - 27 Aug 2006