Feature #22140
openSurfacing Private Messaging
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Description
Hi All,
Following up on the team meeting on Friday 2/14 and our discussion of private messaging on the Commons.
In the past, faculty have asked about students turning in assignments privately on the Commons. Usually I push them to private blog posts or email but with our recent redesign, we might consider surfacing options for private messaging on the Commons so faculty can communicate directly with students through messages.
Currently you can access messages through the home page in the left sidebar under profile picture, through your profile, and through the black admin bar on the upper right or any page when logged in. See message access screenshots.
For surfacing private messages, (I think) two options were discussed or mentioned in the meeting:
1. Creating a link widget that prof can use to link students direct from a site to their private messages. It occurred to me that this might also be achieved through adding a custom menu link? So I am wondering what ideas Sarah has for this.
2. Adding a "messages" item to groups that links students directly to private messages area. While sites have options for private posts, there is currently no infrastructure to support private communication in groups so this would address that issue.
One issue I can think of with both of these options: Once students navigate to private messages, they have navigated away from the course site or group and there is no easy way (other than the browser back button) to get back to the course site or group.
Updated by Colin McDonald 3 days ago
Thanks for this, Laurie. I don't think the screenshots made it through, if you want to try again.
In general, I like the idea of promoting and making it easier to access the messaging/inbox interface, since we've put so much work into it recently. I'm curious to hear Sara's thoughts about the two options you outlined and that we discussed in the meeting.
Not to undercut the options, but just to interrogate them a bit more, I did have a couple of thoughts about smaller tweaks that might get at the same functionality:
1. A widget will have its own advantages, but it occurred to me that the Send To field on the message compose screen has a pretty good autofill/search functionality. If a student was directed there and could spell their professor's name or username (perhaps a big ask, I know) it wouldn't be too hard to initiate the message. Is there a way to just post a general link right to the Compose Message screen? Even a kind of "mailto:" for the Commons? Or is that limited because it is tied into each member account URL structure? Perhaps some of this would be needed anyway for the widget if we go that route. Zach had also posted this project in the chat as a reference:
https://github.com/shamim2883/front-end-pm
2. Instead of adding another tab for messaging in groups (I think that's the suggestion), could we upgrade the Members tab to get pretty close? We would just need a second option in the member panels that says "Message" alongside either Add Friend / Unfriend. Then a professor or whoever could say, "Go to the group's member panel, find me, and hit the message button."