Use Cases
- Rohan Monga (Deactivated)
Outlined below are some identified use cases for High Priority Messaging and Acknowledgements. In many cases, stop-gap solutions are currently in place (for example, viewership of monthly roadmap presentations within Mattermost is tracked using reactions: ).
Developer Use Case (General/Commercial)
The general use case for High Priority Messaging and Acknowledgements can be broken down into three main categories:
Tracking viewership
Important announcements
Urgent requests that require action
These are outlined in more detail below:
Tracking Viewership
User Story
“I want to track views”
Examples: OKR videos and monthly roadmap presentations. Anyone who can see the message can ack it.
Current Stop-Gap Solution
Emoji reactions (usually ) are requested in the message where a video or presentation is posted: “Please react with a once you’ve watched”.
High Priority Messaging Usage
Important presentations or videos could designated so using the “Important” label, helping them stand out from standard channel messages.
Acknowledgements could be requested from a certain group: e.g. count how many members of the broader Mattermost R&D team have viewed each monthly roadmap video.
Important Announcements
User Story
“I want to make sure everyone on my team has seen this”
Examples: Channel-wide announcement about org change. Anyone who can see the message can ack it.
Current Stop-Gap Solution
Channel mentions (“@all”, “@here”, etc.) are used to send a single notification to relevant users
Announcement messages are usually acknowledged using emoji reactions (e.g. )
High Priority Messaging Usage
Important but non-Urgent announcements could be designated so using the “Important” label. Channel mentions could still be used here, but the the “Important” label adds visual indication of importance in case a notification is missed or a user has notifications silenced via Do Not Disturb status, for example.
Urgent announcements, such as those related to safety, could be used to push repeated notifications to users until they acknowledge.
For example, for an on-site team: “The meeting location for the 5:00 client meeting has been moved from room X to room Y. Please acknowledge”.
Note that this is just an example - the Urgent tag doesn’t need to be reserved for emergencies, and exact usage will likely depend on the organization.
Urgent Requests
User Story
“I have an urgent request that I need fixed or looked at, and I need to know that someone is working on it”
Examples: an incorrect release date or feature description on a highly promoted blog post or social campaign.
In this final sub-use-case, multiple people may have the necessary permissions to fix a given problem that is time-sensitive.
Current Stop-Gap Solution
Channel mentions (“@all”, “@here”, etc.) are used to get the attention of relevant users
Replies or Direct Messages are used to confirm that someone is working on addressing a certain issue or task.
High Priority Messaging Usage
This is where High Priority Messaging really shines. Effectively, it can be used as a moderation tool for a queue of important tasks.
When an Urgent task is identified, the group of users that are relevant to solving the problem or completing the task can be pushed persistent notifications.
This group will continue to receive notifications until one of them “acknowledges” the message, effectively marking the task as done and removing it from the queue of important tasks.
In addition to persistent notifications, the “Urgent” message label adds visual indication in the Mattermost UI that there is an important task that needs to be looked at.
The pausing of persistent notifications corresponds with visual indication on the original message itself showing as Acknowledged, so relevant users know when an issue has or has not been addressed.
Example Customer Use Case
The example Use Case below aligns closely to the 3rd general use case outlined above, where an Urgent message that requires some action is pushed to a group of relevant users and needs to be addressed by some member of the tagged group.
User Story
“I need to make sure specific people see my message as soon as possible”
Examples: Field ops requesting permissions from flight managers before proceeding with an order. Only flight managers can ack the message.
Current Stop-Gap Solution
Flight managers are reached by users in the field using custom keywords that are configured to trigger notifications via mentions.
When dealing with multiple high priority requests at a time, flight managers on-shift use their recent mentions as a help desk queue.
Users in the field determine if their message has been acknowledged or not by checking for emoji reactions.
High Priority Messaging Usage
Users in the field can send “Urgent” messages to flight managers by tagging the relevant group and can also request acknowledgement.
Notifications will persist to the whole group until one member of the tagged group marks the message as “Acknowledged” and completes the necessary actions.
In case of an accidental misclick, a flight manager can undo their acknowledgement within 5 minutes of initially clicking it to ensure that the task gets reopened and other flight managers know to look into it.
Customer Q&A
Group management
Will user groups remain static once people are added or will they change frequently (for example with shift changes)?
To future proof this, it may be best to assume they change often
Who configures the user groups? Would it be the team admin?
For our use case, team admins would set these
Who should have permissions to create, edit and delete user groups?
No higher than team admin
Does there need to be permissions around who can view groups?
For our use case, all users in the team are vetted so not as concerned about viewing groups
Is there a use case for user groups that span across teams? ie members of @groupA are in different teams. If so, would the creation and management of these groups rely on System Admins?
So far, all our use cases are self-contained within a team, will try to gather more input on this
Can you provide some examples of user groups you might use and how many people would be expected in a single group? For example, @flightmanagers
@TDD ~10
@FM ~40
@DDO ~40
@DO ~20
AMD ~10
I could see use cases for larger groups up for a few hundred if that could be support. For example tagging everyone at a specific stage location of specific ops center. Open to talk about limitations
Urgent Messages with recurring notifications
Who would be the recipients of urgent messages? If it's an entire user group (ie @flightmanagers), are we concerned about spamming the entire group with repeated notifications? For example, what about off-shift flight managers
Usually a group will receive the urgent msg, If it’s a group, if one person acks the message, it should do it for all and not require each person to click for every member
Should users be able to opt out of repeated notifications from urgent messages in their Account settings?
yes to account for shift work and rotating schedules
Should channels with urgent messages be identified differently in the sidebar, desktop notifications and push notifications (ie a different color, badge type or animation)?
Think this would be a good idea
Message Acknowledgement
Should all members of the channel be able to see if a message has been Ack'd and by who?
I think everyone knowing it was acked it helpful, by who may not be critical but could be useful for crisis management scenarios
For urgent messages, should only mentioned users be able to ack? For example, only @flightmanagers can ack if that group is mentioned in the urgent message
This may not be the case every time, there are some tags where a person higher in the chain could ack a message
Does the user who requested acknowledgement need to be notified when their message is ack'd?
Some kind of visual would be helpful for information flow
If an urgent message is sent to a user group, does it matter if that message has been ack'd by more than one person in the group?
No