CUNY Academic Commons

Following up from the call today, let's adjust this design to show the My Commons filters across the top of:

All Activity
My Groups
My Sites
My Campuses
My Papers
My Friends

FYI, if you're logged in you can see the current My Commons layout here: https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/my-commons/

Then let's keep the secondary dropdown but simplify it a lot, so it only shows:

No Filter
New Posts (comprising public blog and forum posts in Sites and Groups)
New Sites/Groups (comprising new Groups and Sites)

So we're removing:
New Comments (I could see an argument for keeping this, though)
New Memberships
New People (this and the one above we discussed removing to not surface too much from new users right away)
External Blogs (not sure about this functionality?)
Docs options, now sunset

And now I'm wondering if this secondary dropdown will be useful enough to keep at all. Sara or others, what do you think?

Scott, I'm also adding you here for any feedback since you know My Commons well, and also to note that we should update the My Commons documentation here when we're done: https://help.commons.gc.cuny.edu/my-commons-2/

We should also discuss whether we sunset "My Commons" as a phrase to describe this page/functionality. Also now that I'm thinking about it, I wonder if instead of News this nav item should really say Activity, or something that gets more at the personal and Commons-oriented aspects of this page.

Adding some watchers here to take a look at the update I just posted, thanks!

Then let's keep the secondary dropdown but simplify it a lot, so it only shows:

If we are removing items from the filter dropdown, should we also remove those item types from the activity stream? For example, if you can no longer select 'New Docs', should we be showing 'Colin created a new doc...' activity items?

And now I'm wondering if this secondary dropdown will be useful enough to keep at all. Sara or others, what do you think?

Stepping back, the original purpose of the /activity/ page (both on the Commons and in BuddyPress more generally) is to help the user browse and drill-down into public site activity. If you remove options from the filter dropdown, or remove that dropdown altogether, you're reducing the ability to do this kind of discovery. Maybe this is OK and worth the simplicity trade-off - the amount of activity on the Commons is overwhelmingly large, and people may not want (or be able) to parse the firehose. In any case, we should be thoughtful about what use cases we're precluding if we remove built-in functionality like this.

Hi all,

I am looking at this on cdev and it looks good! A couple comments:

When logged-in, I renamed the "All Activity" tab from My Commons to "My Activity"

This makes sense to me. I would also suggest we make "Sitewide activity" with the latest news tab the default one that comes up when a user clicks "News". After first seeing the sitewide tab, a user can click into their personalized "My X" tabs

Also for the "Latest News" block, when logged-in, this block is only visible on the "Sitewide" tab.

Also makes sense to me. Sometimes the block didn't always appear for me in the sitewide tab and i had to refresh.

I also left the filter options alone until we've made a decision on which items to keep and trim.

I lean toward keeping the filters. The dropdown is pretty unobtrusive and it does allow a user to drill down into more detail.

Also do we want to get rid of "My Papers" - didn't we discontinue this? And optionally, we could remove any filters items about "Docs" because thy are so rarely used...

For our conversation, here's a list of the filters currently in the dropdown:

activity_update  Show Updates
new_blog_post  Show Blog Posts
new_blog_comment  Show Blog Comments
created_group  Show New Groups
joined_group  Show New Group Memberships
friendship_accepted,friendship_created  Show Friendship Connections
new_member  Show New People
exb  External Blogs
bp_doc_created  New Docs
bp_doc_edited  Doc Edits
bp_doc_comment  Doc Comments

Here's a list of activity types in the database that don't appear in this list. I've removed those that come from plugins that we've already deprecated (such as Social Paper):

activity_comment
added_group_document
bbp_reply_create
bbp_topic_create
bpeo_create_event
bpeo_edit_event
deleted_group_document
edited_group_document
group_details_updated
new_avatar
new_event
updated_profile

Thanks for pulling these filters and activity types, Boone. Is it also possible to see what types of activity are shown by default in the current stream?

https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/activity/

I'm seeing items there like profile (or profile pic) updated and site created, wondering where these are coming from and if we can filter for them too.

I'll also note a few things from trying the current filter options on the page, working roughly from the bottom of the list to the top:

(First off, a lot of the filters have "Show" in front of them, like "Show New Groups" or "Show New People" etc. I think we can probably remove "Show" for simplicity.)

- Doc Edits: 6 in the last 10 months
- Doc Comments: 5 in the last 10 months (all by the same user)
- New Docs: Roughly 60 in the last 10 months

(I think we should at least combine these three into one "Docs" filter. Then it will be easy enough to see the different types of activity it contains, and the filtered items will be more active.)

- External Blogs: These all seem to be posts from the GCDI group or the Futures Initiative group, a couple every month or so.

(Should we combine this with the Blog Posts filter? Is it a meaningful difference to most users whether the posts are external?)

- New People, Friendship Connections, Group Memberships all seem good as-is, and I think will become more useful once we are offering the logged-in tab interface of our redesign.

- New Groups also good, wondering if we can offer one for Sites too as noted above. We could also show "group_details_updated" here and change the names to Group Updates and Site Updates, showing what's newly created as well as newly changed.

- Blog Comments seems good, and Blog Posts too with the caveat of the External Blogs combine above.

- Updates (as in the twitter-like update feature) is rarely used and we're already looking to deprecate as per our discussions of the Profile page/settings overhaul.

- I'd be interested in an Event Updates filter that shows bpeo_create_event and bpeo_edit_event

We also should think about how the available filters need to change with each tab that will be shown now as well. We've been talking about adding a new tab that shows only activity for your campus/groups/sites/friends and calling it My Network, but I'm leaning toward My Commons now for the all-encompassing name. Then the filter breakdown would be:

Sitewide - all filters
My Commons - all filters
My Campus - all filters (for a user's campus)
My Groups - New/Updated Groups, New Group Memberships, add in bbp_topic_create too perhaps?
My Sites - New/Updated Sites, Blog Posts, Blog Comments
My Friends - Friendship Connections, and what can we show cross-referencing a user's friends and then activity done by one of their friends, like a new Site created? If this is doable, it could be nice to show a wide cross-section of friends-only activity.

Thanks for pulling these filters and activity types, Boone. Is it also possible to see what types of activity are shown by default in the current stream?

What's shown in the stream is a combination of the two lists in https://redmine.gc.cuny.edu/issues/16535#note-8 We can add dropdown choices for any of these, in any combination.

Thanks, Boone. I guess updated_profile covers profile pic changes/uploads? And which activity type in the two lists you mention covers sites created? Is that lumped in with the group types?

I guess updated_profile covers profile pic changes/uploads?

Yes, that's right.

And which activity type in the two lists you mention covers sites created?

The existing feed at /news/ shows all activity. The exhaustive list of activity types:

| activity_comment           |
| activity_update            |
| added_group_document       |
| bbp_reply_create           |
| bbp_topic_create           |
| bp_doc_comment             |
| bp_doc_created             |
| bp_doc_edited              |
| bpeo_create_event          |
| bpeo_edit_event            |
| cacsp_paper_added_to_group |
| cp_project_added           |
| cp_task_added              |
| cp_task_commented          |
| cp_task_list_added         |
| created_group              |
| created_link               |
| deleted_group_document     |
| edited_group_document      |
| exb                        |
| friendship_accepted        |
| friendship_created         |
| group_details_updated      |
| joined_group               |
| last_activity              |
| new_avatar                 |
| new_blog                   |
| new_blog_comment           |
| new_blog_post              |
| new_booking                |
| new_cacsp_comment          |
| new_cacsp_edit             |
| new_cacsp_paper            |
| new_event                  |
| new_forum_post             |
| new_forum_topic            |
| new_groupblog_comment      |
| new_groupblog_post         |
| new_member                 |
| new_status                 |
| new_tp_project             |
| new_wire_post              |
| page_edited                |
| tool_marked_used           |
| updated_profile            |
| wiki_edit  

In my earlier comment, I'd filtered out those that are no longer relevant because they belong to deprecated plugins, etc.

Here are the latest screens for the activity design and filters: https://www.figma.com/proto/egUblnG1UzGfKU05esn9Jl/CUNY-Design---Fall-2022-(Development)?page-id=1979%3A4064&node-id=1980%3A4125&viewport=43%2C656%2C0.25&scaling=min-zoom

Sitewide, My Commons, & My Campus

• Events (Event Creation, Event Updates) - new_event, bpeo_create_event, bpeo_edit_event
• Site Updates (Site Creation, Site Updates) - new_blog, page_edited
• Site Posts (Site Posts) - new_blog_post, new_groupblog_post
• Site Comments (Comments on Site Posts) - new_blog_comment, new_groupblog_comment
• Group Updates (Group Creation, Group Updates) - created_group, group_details_updated
• Group Memberships (People who joined or left groups) - joined_group
• Group Library (Document, File, & Link Creation, Edits, & Comments) - bp_doc_created, added_group_document, bp_doc_edited, edited_group_document, deleted_group_document, bp_doc_comment, created_link
• Group Forums (Topic Creation, Post Creation, Replies, & Attachments) - new_forum_topic, bbp_topic_create, new_forum_post, bbp_reply_create
• New People (New People) - new_member
• People Updates (Profile Updates, Photo Updates, Friendship Connections) - updated_profile, new_avatar, friendship_created, friendship_accepted
• External Blogs (Updates from GCDI group or the Futures Initiative group) - exb

My Groups

• Group Updates (Group Creation, Group Updates) - created_group, group_details_updated
• Group Memberships (People who joined or left groups) - joined_group
• Group Events (Event Creation, Event Updates Associated w/groups) - new_event, bpeo_create_event, bpeo_edit_event
• Group Documents (Document Creation, Edits, & Comments) - bp_doc_created, bp_doc_edited, bp_doc_comment
• Group Files & Links (File, & Link Creation, Edits, & Comments) - added_group_document, edited_group_document, deleted_group_document, created_link
• Group Forums (Topic Creation, Post Creation, Replies, & Attachments) - new_forum_topic, bbp_topic_create, new_forum_post, bbp_reply_create

My Sites

• Site Updates (Site Creation, Site Updates) - new_blog, page_edited
• Site Posts (Site Posts) - new_blog_post, new_groupblog_post
• Site Comments (Comments on Site Posts) - new_blog_comment, new_groupblog_comment

My Friends

• Profile Updates (Profile Updates, Photo Updates) - updated_profile, new_avatar
• Friendship Connections (Friendship Connections) - friendship_created, friendship_accepted

Thanks for this Ray, it's looking great. Those group page filter updates make sense too.

On the order of the top tabs, I think it makes sense for Sitewide to be first on the left, then have it progress to more granular tabs after that: My Commons, My Campus, My Groups, My Sites, My Friends. My Campus is tricky because some may not have a campus selected, but for those that do (or have multiple), it should be a sizable amount of activity.

I think this could be the order even when you're logged in and the default tab on this page would be My Commons, rather than Sitewide if you're not logged in.

I was wondering about the ordering in the drop-downs, too. Maybe Sara could speak more to why she set them up how she did in her mockups. I don't think it's a big issue, but we should try to be consistent.

I'm guessing something needs to be configured with the page template or something like that. Hopefully Jeremy can take a look when it's PST working time.

cdev needed the latest changes. Should be good for testing now.

Thanks Ray (and Scott!), this is looking good to me. Sara, what are your thoughts/recollections about removing activity stream images on mobile? I think this solution is fine though, so we can at least move ahead for now. The images are nice to have and break up the stream, even if it is more scrolling.

I don't think we should remove the images. If we want the feed to be more condensed, I can work on an alternative layout.

Ok Sara, sounds good. Let's see how it settles post-launch and we can circle back.