Support blocking a contact and/or contact group

[lbschenkel]

It may be useful to have a specific contact "Spam" and/or a specific group that contains spam numbers, and configure the app to block those contacts.

Today this is achievable by manually configuring regexps, but it would be more useful to have two specific fields: "block contact" and "block group" so the user can select a contact and/or group and if the incoming number matches one of those, it is blocked.

[aj3423]

What about adding two new Regex Flags:

• Contact Name
• Contact Group Name

For example, if you have a contact named "goalkeeper" that belongs to contact group "football", you can set a rule:

• goalkeeper(with the Contact Name flag) to block him only
• or football(with the Contact Group Name flag) to block all the 11 people in contact group "football"

How do you think? And just out of curiosity, what is your use case?

[aj3423]

plus it can also start hitting wrong contacts by accident.

Why is it possible to hit wrong contacts? It's exact matching, I mean (foo|bar) will only match "foo" or "bar", not "foo1". Unless you have two contacts set with the same name, this is actually allowed in the contacts app, but why would anyone do that.

Matching by name also has its advantage. For example, members of "work" group may change all the time, when "match by number", you'll need to update the rule whenever there are personnel changes. And for single contact, you won't need to update the rule after adding more numbers to that contact. It's kind of "higher level".

As you mentioned, the only drawback of "by name" is the name can change. Your preference for the "by number" might be due to your past experience with that app. But do you actually change contact/group names often and really think it's necessary to support "by number"?

Your image refers to the Contacts in QuickSettings. I understand it's intuitive to put all features about Contacts together, but there are reasons I prefer not:

• I guess it won't take long for another feature request to appear: "block work group at weekend, only allow it at workdays", so it needs to be implemented in regex rule anyway.
• As previously mentioned, it's not for most people, they would need to spend more time learning what they don't need. QuickSettings should remain as simple as possible.

About the UI, I changed my mind to not use the Regex Flags, the contact icon will be there all the time, you can enable/disable it in the popup:

• when not enabled, it's a grey icon, as in the previous image
• when enabled, it'll be green, and different icons for contact/group

[lbschenkel]

Matching by name also has its advantage. For example, members of "work" group may change all the time, when "match by number", you'll need to update the rule whenever there are personnel changes. And for single contact, you won't need to update the rule after adding more numbers to that contact. It's kind of "higher level".

I think there's a mental model mismatch here. What I'm proposing is that when you pick a contact, you select the contact. You don't select the contact number neither the name. What is being picked is the contact, and the app will remember the contact by ID (but the UI will show the display name, of course), so subsequent changes to the contact or the group will not require any rule change in SpamBlocker. The scenario that you described is simply not possible with that implementation, as you will pick the work group and then any member of that group will be blocked, even if the work group members change later.

Basically SpamBlocker will have in its internal state a "blocked contact id" and a "blocked contact group id" and on incoming calls it will match the number against all numbers in that contact (or it will take the members of the group and do that for each contact).

This is exactly what other apps do. Once you picked the "bad" contact, it'll keep working even if that contact or group changes and the rule will never hit any other contact outside of the picked one.

For UI simplicity, I don't even think there's a need to support a simultaneous contact and a group. You can have just one, and two pickers so you show either contacts or groups to pick. But once you pick, it'll remember that "contact ID" or "group ID" and to the contact or group matching on incoming calls as described above.

[aj3423]

Ah I see, the ID, never occurred to me for some reason.. I'll use the ID instead of number or name.

You can have just one, and two pickers so you show either contacts or groups to pick.

Yeah, that's what I meant.

So the updated proposal:

• One icon, it can be either gray or green. It can be either a contact icon or a group icon.
• When clicked, a dialog popups, with two widgets:
  • a radio box, for choosing either contacts or groups
  • a list for all contacts or groups, a toggle box for each item, enabled items are pre-selected
• the regex rule will contain all the IDs, like: (11|22|33)

[lbschenkel]

I mean, this will work in the sense that in the end the user can achieve it but it's unnecessarily un-optimal UX in my opinion. Imagine if I picked a contact or group. Now I leave the app. In a few days I go back, and I want to confirm which one I picked, I see an ID there, how come would I ever know if that's correct or not?

I think it would be much simpler for the app and for the user to have one field somewhere, with a picker (or two pickers). The picker will allow choosing one contact, or one group. Once picked, the app shows the display name of the contact or group and remembers its ID. That's it.

There's no reason for have multiple selections and the whole implementation and UX complication that it entails. You either have one contact with all the "bad" numbers, or a number of contacts that you can put in the same group. So all you need to do is to allow the user to pick one of either kind, and show the friendly name.

I also think it's counter-productive to be retrofitting this into the number rules because those are not number rules: you're not specifying numbers, you're specifying a contact. It is not the right mental model, plus it "pollutes" the regexp UI with more visual controls that are not really needed (because as I explained, there's no good reason to have multiple rules for blocking contacts or multiple selections).

Would you really think it would be too much to have a "Contacts (block)" option under "Contacts" with a picker? If you want to hide it more, why not put inside a popup attached to "Contacts" instead? Or perhaps an arrow, such as "Recent Apps"?

I would volunteer to implement this and experiment and send a PR with what I believe is the most sensible approach, UX wise. Would you be willing to consider incorporating this feature? (Asking first in order to avoid wasting time and work.)

[aj3423]

I appreciate you offering the PR, but it's all about how it should be implemented.

I was just thinking, in favor of the "by group", "by contact" is actually redundant, since you can easily add those contacts to a group. The way how you use the "spam contact", is that you put all spam numbers to that contact, and use it like a group. So I think supporting "by group" should be enough.

In a few days I go back, and I want to confirm which one I picked, I see an ID there

Since "by contact" is dropped, no more concern about renaming contacts. And I suppose no one would rename a group often, especially when it's called "spam". So I think it's better to use the group name instead of the ID, and this is solved.

Would you really think it would be too much to have a "Contacts (block)" option under "Contacts" with a picker?

It would be too much for most people. And I guess after this, people would ask for something like: "block some group at some particular schedule, and show different notification", sounds reasonable, right? It has to be supported in the regex rule, and when this is supported, the "Contacts (block)" becomes completely useless, the only thing it does would be making the "Contacts" feature harder to understand. Most users are not programmers, some don't understand the priority, some may not even understand the "inclusive/exclusive", best to not complicate the QuickSettings.

I also think it's counter-productive to be retrofitting this into the number rules because those are not number rules

You are right, but after this feature, the concept of the Number Rules is changed, it's not just about number, it represents the "who", who is calling. I won't change the label since it's still "number" for most people.

But the number concept reminds me the leading "#" icon, it's the number sign and currently it's useless. It should be able to switch to a contact icon to represent it's in contact group mode. No more trailing contact icon.

There's no reason for have multiple selections and the whole implementation and UX complication that it entails.

It could be useful, for example, a really versatile guy wants to block all the groups at workdays: football/basketball/tennis/karate/..., without multi-select, he would have to setup the rules one by one, and if he wants to change the schedule or notification type, he'll do that again.

So this is the updated proposal:

• Only support "Contact Group"
• The leading "#" icon can be switched to a group icon, which indicates it's "group mode"
  I'm still thinking about how to trigger the popup dialog, maybe use a dropdown menu, or a long press indicator.
• When it's triggered, the popup will list all the groups for selecting.
• The regex use group names like: (football|basketball)

[aj3423]

The selecting dialog isn't necessary, manually typing group names should be enough.

[Umotas]

ID

P.S.
In different smartphones /vendors there is different approach of contact's ID. I think it won't simple way to use ID :) And if contact will be delete by user? It needs to check it every time.
to use 'name of group' is optimal way.

[lbschenkel]

ID

P.S. In different smartphones /vendors there is different approach of contact's ID. I think it won't simple way to use ID :) And if contact will be delete by user? It needs to check it every time. to use 'name of group' is optimal way.

Why would that be a problem? That is how every single app allows picking a contact. The ID is just an opaque blob that is guaranteed to be unique that you can save and use to find the same match later (or not find, if it was deleted).

Edit: sorry, I miswrote, when I said "ID" I meant this: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/provider/ContactsContract.Contacts.html#CONTENT_LOOKUP_URI

[aj3423]

That reminds me another problem with the ID, if you clone the configuration to another phone, group with same name may have a
different ID.

[lbschenkel]

The lookup URI is stable, if the ID changes the contact will be found by other means as described in the documentation I linked. Otherwise no app that allows selecting a contact could ever work.

[Umotas]

if you clone the configuration to another phone, group with same name may have a
different ID.

100%
But I am not coder/developer. Maybe link from developer lbschenkel helps to understand this feature.