New to the community? Start here

[Automate] More-Easily-Sortable Emails from Automate

0

I’d like to sort emails so I can just look at the ones that are from sites having issues.

It would be nice if “0% Change” was “No change” so I could sort it from the “10% change”, “20% change”, etc…

It would be nice if “0 Updates” was “No Updates”, so I could sort them from “10 Updates”, “20 Updates, “10000 Updates”, etc…

It would be nice if “0 Errors” was “No errors”, so I could sort them from “10 Errors”, “20 Errors, “10000 Errors”, etc…

[Edit] Actually this might be easier if the subject had “Changes Made”, “Updates Made”, and “Differences Found” in the titles when applicable. That way all could be sorted on a positive for any of these rather than having to make more-complex rules for sorting as I would have to per the above suggestion. [/Edit]

Fri, 14 May 2021 16:59:12
More The Hub discussions
The Hub
  • Patrick Freitas
    • FLS

    Hi Myke

    I hope you are doing well.

    Thank you for the feedback and suggestion, we sent this to our developers for further discussion, we can’t give an estimated time or guarantee if we are going to implement it, but It sounds like a good option and if more members request the same this can be stronger.

    Best Regards
    Patrick Freitas

  • Tony G
    • Mr. LetsFixTheWorld

    Here’s an alternate suggestion that accomplishes your goals while allowing everyone else to achieve their own similar goals for sorting and filtering: Admin-Defined Notifications.

    The emails we get are hard-coded. One size never fits all.
    In the hub, create a Notifications Administration area.
    Create a dropdown list of email types for Automate, Uptime, Defender, Snapshot, etc.
    For each email type, provide a template for the default subject. Later, if people go for this, add HTML body, text body, maybe even SMTP headers.

    Define %PLACEHOLDERS for values that are replaced at run-time. For example:
    Automate report for %SITE: %UPDATES %UPDATEWORD, %ERRORS %ERRORWORD

    Now, we can switch that up for ourselves:
    %SITE updates: %ERRORS %ERRORWORD and %UPDATES %UPDATEWORD

    For numeric values allow a small number of masks:

    - N = convert 0 to "text", where we provide "No" or another language equivalent
- 0 = zero-fill 2 digits if max errors < 100 an 3 if >= 100.

    Example: Automation on %SITE resulted in %ERRORS-0 %ERRORWORD with %UPDATES-N %UPDATEWORD
    Results in: Automation on mysite.tld resulted in 03 errors with no updates

    My approach to a lot of things is “provide data, don’t hardcode the presentation”. So I could suggest webhooks or an API to make data available so that we can consume it in whatever format we wish. For example: “Where there are no errors, post an update to Slack and send my client an email. But when there is an error, SMS me and just email the client about the updates.” No one else will want that sort of processing, but many people will want Some kind of custom processing, that none of us can get now without scraping emails.

    Here are others ways that DEV can approach this:

    – Don’t create a Notifications Administration page in the Hub – it’s too complex for the target audience and management has been clear about the kind of changes they will and will not make in the Hub. I’m fine with that. Just designate a place for us to upload a template, and use that rather than the default template when generating emails. No Hub UI changes!

    – Or try this: Create a field in our DEV profile for a repo of assets that we expose for all customizations like this. For example, github.com/me/my-dev-repo. Now DEV can poll that to get our custom templates. Just tell us what folder and file you poll for specific assets: /automate/email/subject.txt, /uptime/downalert-body.txt …

    – Delegate responsibility for mailing to each site. Branda can query DEV for data for Automate, Uptime, Defender, Snapshot, etc. Branda will then poll DEV occasionally like it does for other purposes. The JSON return value has just data, no formatting. Branda ( customization! white label! ) will use a local, site-specific template to email, or we can create a hook to process the data as we wish. Emails will then come from the local site, not MailChimp, which helps with mail processing – and DEV doesn’t need to send all of these emails through a third-party!

    My bottom line on this is that I agree with a request to make messaging better and more suitable for filtering and sorting, but changes for one user will not be adequate for another, so to do this “once and for all”, I think DEV should code in a way that separates data from presentation. This is extremely common in the IT industry. We do it with JSON, XML, CSV, CSS, themes, post templates, MVC, OOP, etc. But DEV hard-codes everything with an eagerness to create a great solution for a specific class of user. I personally think this leaves a lot of us wanting for more or better. The question is whether “most” of the DEV client base wants customization like this. Their target audience does not include people who want such things. I’d have to accept that. On the other hand, a lot of attention has been devoted to white-label customizations. I have to wonder if the DEV audience that exists is really the audience that they try to attract.

    It’s a shame that there’s no survey plugin that can be used on this site to ask the member base about stuff like this. ;)