Nextcloud actions progress in notifications

[marcoambrosini]

The problem:

As a Nextcloud user of the web interface, it's difficult to keep track of the status of operations I initiate such as copying, moving files, Nextcloud assistant jobs and more.

This results in a feeling of uncertainty to the user and renders the experience with these types of operations less than ideal.

The proposed solution:

There should be a place in the user interface where the user could have a glance at the undergoing operations at any given time. When the user starts an operation that is likely to take some time to complete, it should be immediately visible somewhere in the user interface that the operation is being carried out, along with how long it's going to take and some other features.

Features:

• Ability to see the initiated operations in one place
• Ability to selectively stop operations
• Granularity In operations that involve more than one item. For example, in a batch file upload, being able to stop uploading one file and continue with the rest
• Continuity of the initiated operation even upon closing a tab. Once I reopen the app, I can see the operation has continued and has been completed.
• Detailed full size view

Possible operations shown:

• Copy files operation
• Moving files operation
• Zipping folders for downloads
• Uploading large files in text based applications
• AI processes
• Desktop client status
• Installing Nextcloud apps
• Ownership transfer of files
• Other services?

[jancborchardt]

Sounds good as talked about :) @marcoambrosini do you want to pick this up?

[nickvergessen]

I fear that it might give an impression of the entire instance being a bit "slow" as the idea is that "everything is scheduled".

Yeah, another problem is most of the things only work "live", like uploading, moving/copying files, ...
If they are in a dropdown and maybe even hidden by default, it could appear as "it's okay to navigate or jump to another app". But that will actually cancel the upload until we are a single page app.

For things like AI processing it might work, but not sure it's possible to have a "time remaining" info for those and other tasks.

Would the icon be shown all the time or only when there are tasks in progress?

I would say the later, just to have it clean.

Is the scope of this limited to just viewing the tasks or can they be paused/restarted/cancelled etc?

I guess this heavily depends on the picked actions. Things like copying a folder sounds problematic when paused/restarted, due to upcoming conflicts 🙈 What would be the result of a cancel? Partly copied or delete already copied files?
I would say don't make your life complicated and just tackle it step by step.

I'm wondering if it makes sense for this to be combined with the notifications, for example as maybe another tab (just an idea, to help with keeping the top right corner features simple)

While I get the point and this is already how the desktop client does it, I beg you to not combine this. The concepts are totally different, APIs are totally different, Notifications is even an app that can be disabled, ...
Also it makes it much less visible that e.g. a task was started, etc.

[jancborchardt]

I'm wondering if it makes sense for this to be combined with the notifications, for example as maybe another tab (just an idea, to help with keeping the top right corner features simple)

While I get the point and this is already how the desktop client does it, I beg you to not combine this. The concepts are totally different, APIs are totally different, Notifications is even an app that can be disabled, ...
Also it makes it much less visible that e.g. a task was started, etc.

@nimishavijay @nickvergessen just talked with @karlitschek about the proposal and we also came to the conclusion it would be best to combine it with notifications, rather than introducing yet another item to the top bar.

This is similar e.g. on Android, where for example uploads and downloads are notifications while in progress, and then also when done.
Adding yet another item to the top bar would really be a bit much. We need to take care to not make the interface too busy.

[marcoambrosini]

@jancborchardt and @karlitschek I'll look into this, but since it's much more difficult to do this technically as @nickvergessen mentioned, we could make space for this feature in the header by removing the contacts search, which has been duplicated functionality for a long time right next to the global search.

We just need to make sure that the search result item itself offers the same functionality.

Edit: frankly, it's not just a matter of technical difficulty. From a UX perspective, I think that task manager and notifications are complex enough to have their own element too.

[nickvergessen]

just talked with karlitschek about the proposal and we also came to the conclusion it would be best to combine it with notifications, rather than introducing yet another item to the top bar.

This is similar e.g. on Android, where for example uploads and downloads are notifications while in progress, and then also when done.
Adding yet another item to the top bar would really be a bit much. We need to take care to not make the interface too busy.

I totally get that. just saying that something that is rather stable and easy maintainable at the moment, will turn into a beast that operates on 2 different data stores and data structures. I'm currently maintaining the notifications app in it's current form, but I can not be of any help with a change like this.

We can of course separate the "header menu" from the notifications logic and then have both features, task manager and the notifications hook into it and doing their things. But API-wise (with pushes, mobile support, desktop clients, etc.) the concepts should be separated and not mixed into each others.

[nickvergessen]

PS: Nevermind, I had commented/outlined this before and it's only about the UI.

While it might be "a good idea" design/UX-wise (not saying yes/no to that), that is a definite No from API side for me. Interoperability with clients, how push notifications work and the data structure to aligning with OS and WebBrowser notifications, as well as scalability are nothing we can sacrifice.

That being said, all OS I ever used (Ubuntu, Mint, Windows, Mac) have "progress" in different sections and not melted into notifications.

[MrRinkana]

I think a separate icon that only appears when something is being done is the best looking, but integrated in notifications is also nice, as long as the icon indicates a action is being performed at a glance (not just a notification dot).

[marcoambrosini]

@MrRinkana we need to integrate it with notifications mostly for real estate reasons. Otherwise I'd also preferred having a dedicated element for these