Bug? Notification counter is not displayed

[VeselinaPeykova]

By Notification counter I mean the following areas:

Today I noticed that the number of unread notifications is not displayed anymore for my user.

I have tested with the following browsers: Pale Moon 27.1.0 (32-bit Windows version), Firefox ESR 45.7.0 (Windows), IE11, Google Chrome Portable 55.0.2883.87 - in none of them I can see currently the number of unread notifications (I have 3 unread notifications in the activity stream at the moment).

Could somebody verify this with a different user/OS browser combination?

[jerryjanda]

Thanks for reporting. I thought this was a bug that had been resolved, but I may be confusing it with something else. I'll investigate further.

[VeselinaPeykova]

Now this is interesting.. I did not receive a notification for Vadim Kalinin's answer, but I received a notification for the answer, posted by Raghu Govindarajan.

I hope that this was just a temporary problem, which is now being resolved. The alternative - that notifications work differently than described in Use Notifications Like a Boss, is unpleasant.

I also noticed that the new notification indicator disappeared upon page refresh (I did not click on the link deliberately) and also upon opening a completely different page (SAP blogs).

@Raghu: I was also hesitant to post about the problem, but for a different reason: if I remember correctly, down-voting does not decrease Karma credit values, even if it did - I don't care that much about my reputation score... it is simply that most of the reported bugs take such a long time to be reviewed and resolved...

[former_member28818]

Hello Veselina,

Commenting here as the question is already closed. Thanks for posting this here. The change you see in the behavior of Notification counter was made after considering the feedback that was received regarding this issue. Many users found it confusing that the notification counter did not disappear when they accessed their notification inbox. To solve this issue, the notification counter now shows the No. of new notifications in the user's inbox. And this no. will disappear as soon as the user accesses his/her notifications. The indicator will not represent the No. of unread notifications any longer. In the coming sprints, we will incorporate a message in the Notifications inbox that will indicate to the user the No. of unread notifications and allow users to filter notifications by read/unread status. Mockups for this in addition to the ability for users to filter Notifications by notification type will soon be shared with the Activity Stream and Notifications Advisory Committee for their approval.

Thanks,

Sajid

[VeselinaPeykova]

I selected Vadim's answer as correct and closed the question as any responsible forum member does, because he pointed me to the Coffee Corner discussion, where you explained the new approach.

I still consider this as a bad design and a terrible way to deploy changes, but my question got answered, which is what counts.

[JL23]

I must have missed this discussion where members complaint about unread notifications and its counter, or we read and understood a discussion totally differently, can you point me to this discussion?

I think this is now even worse than before. How can anyone track notifications if no indication is given that there are still some open which should be processed? I have several pages on notifications every day - is it really wanted to manage to-do's offline. One wrong click and a user will not recognize or be remembered that he got a message from a moderator.

[former_member28818]

Hello Jurgen,

I apologize for the inconvenience. I am sharing mock-ups of how we will tackle this in our Advisory Council JAM Group soon. Users will be shown a message indicating the No. of unread notifications remaining in their Notifications Inbox as long as they have any. Users will also be able to filter with read/unread status.

As to why we rolled out this feature, I believe it originated here:

https://answers.sap.com/questions/27722/bug-notification-counter-is-not-reset.html

It may have also been picked up from here:

https://answers.sap.com/questions/29130/index.html

I believe there was also an idea on IdeaPlace:

https://ideas.sap.com/D37716

I am reaching out to Moshe who was directing these efforts for more information Jurgen. Hopefully we will be able to incorporate the "No. of unread notification message" as soon as possible as I realize the lack of this information can be frustrating for users (as I was using the - now previous - unread notification indicator in the same manner you were).

Best,

Sajid Amir

[VeselinaPeykova]

I read the discussions from these links, however, my understanding of what people complained about, is slightly different from what was delivered.

In the previous solution, when you open Notification stream and see the list of unread notifications, you click on links to read them, mark the notification as read, but unless you refresh the page manually, the notification counter was not updated. In addition, unless you refresh a page or open a new one, you could not see any notification updates (counter increase in case a new notification was sent).

My understanding of read notification is either you open the corresponding link or you set the notification as read (from the so well hidden item menu option). In my case, I did not click on a link to read the comment and I did not set the notification as read - I simply switched between Activity and Notifications tabs. From what I have read, Joachim Rees and Eli Klovski, mentioned the need for page refresh for the counter to be updated, I saw no request to clear notification counter on page refresh or switching between tabs without any additional action to indicate that you have read a notification. There needs to be some consistency between the notifications counter and the unread notifications, otherwise both become unusable.

I completely agree with the members' suggestions in these discussions and with the idea concept in the link. It is strange, though, that one of the main points in the most popular idea, related to notifications, https://ideas.sap.com/D37707, was not considered in the design: manageable by setting.

How can we override now, not in the next sprint, this new solution?

[former_member28818]

I understand what you are saying Veselina. You see the counter will reflect only new notifications from now. And we will implement a new message in the notification inbox that will indicate the No. of unread notifications. Thus allowing users access to both of the piece of information (new notifications- through counter; and unread - through the message). And the idea you indicated is still being refined Veselina. More updates will follow.

[VeselinaPeykova]

How do we override it now? I suppose that you have a backup solution...

And the current (new solution) is actually bugged - in discussion detail display I see no notifications - I selected yours from my Notifications stream, while on tagged pages ( like this one https://www.sap.com/community/tag.html?id=167431589774684563301227734202839&tag=type:question ) I see 22, even if I refresh the page. This is also the case if I open a link from a "tagged" page to a question, which I am going to read (there was no tab open with Activity Stream/Notifications at all) - the counter jumps from 22 to zero.

[former_member186338]

Just tested number of cases and:

"New" means - since last refresh of the Notifications page (https://activities.sap.com/#/notifications)

This refresh can be done by refresh of already opened Notifications page or by opening Notification page using link. Notification page refresh will clear yellow notification.

Also yellow notification will not be shown automatically if you get a new notification, current page refresh is required.

Not clear how it's related to the Community member's ideas...

[joachimrees1]

I think I like the new behavior, just not the way it was (not) communicated - would have expected a blog about it on tag "UsingSAP.om". (Even a small one, maybe just pointing to the Coffee-Corner-discussion-comment, would have been fine; it should just have been a new Blog in order to show up in my RSS-Client!)

best

Joachim

[VeselinaPeykova]

It appears, that now the behavior was adjusted again - previously I was getting different results on the number of unread notifications, depending on which page I have opened - e.g. question display = 5, tagged page = 20 (tagged page was opened after opening the question detail). Now this is consistent. In addition, now I see that if I mark a notification as unread, the counter displays the correct value. You need to refresh the activity stream page for a counter to get updated, but the behavior is consistent. I am OK with what I see now.

Yes, it would have been nice to have such changes communicated and avoid confusion (before posting I searched for updates in the wiki and for Jerry's blogs, just not in the Coffee Corner).

Update: aaand now the behaviour was changed again... I have no other logical explanation why yesterday I saw a different behaviour, than that this is the actual QA system.

[former_member186338 · Accepted solution]

Hi Veselina,

It's not a bug, it's a feature - please read at the end:

https://answers.sap.com/articles/128784/bugger-off-using-sapcom.html

[raghug · Accepted solution]

It's not a bug, it's a feature

Ah! What else can I say 🙂

[VeselinaPeykova · Accepted solution]

Oh my... this is worse than I initially expected.

I will try to remain speechless....

If you can, please convert your comment to an answer and I will mark it as correct.

[former_member186338 · Accepted solution]

Converted! And the comments under my comment are still here 🙂

[VeselinaPeykova · Accepted solution]

And the fun part is, that before I clicked to see your latest comment, I opened a link of content by tag (at this stage my user is displayed as not logged on... different story). When I clicked on my profile link for the SSO (Sometimes Signed On) to trigger, I saw 8 unread notifications (which is the actual number of unread notifications, that I have at present), then upon page refreshed I saw 1 unread notification. It will be funny if you leave Activity Stream open for a while, your session expires and the page gets refreshed after you click on the popup. It will probably clear all unread notifications...

Usually the practice when applying partial fixes is to deploy them at a time, in a sequence and in a way, which does not break the current functionality. #justmy2cents

[raghug]

Thank you Veselina for posting this, I have this bug too and was hesitating to post it here - Vadim knows why ;). I am MacOS Sierra and Google Chrome.

[former_member186338]

Your confirmation answer can be also down-voted 🙂

[former_member186338]

Interesting! Just tested:

I am able to see new notifications and I am able to mark as read the new notifications.

But when I marked number of my old notifications as unread - the counter is missing.