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Thank you for your very kind endorsement, @Eldenroot! +1

I believe that I won't be the only one after you release it who will write same thing!

Aw. Dude. You're the bomb.

Just share screenshots and list of features

(2020-04-30, 02:39 PM)Eldenroot Wrote: [ -> ]Just share screenshots and list of features

Oh, alright then. You twisted my arm. :-)

I linked to a list of features in my first reply in this thread, so I won't repeat that. Here though are a bunch of screenshots with annotations by me so folks know what they're looking at.

Here's the first step where "Anne" creates a new conversation group - a conversation group is a sort of "private forum lite". You can see that members have been added via autocomplete to the "Add Participants" box. At the second step, Anne will set the rights of those users in her new conversation group.

[attachment=42799]

And here's that second step, where Anne sets those rights:

[attachment=42800]

Once Anne has saved the group, she can start a new group conversation in it (and for those who are wondering: no, conversations don't need to be part of a group; they can be ungrouped, with an arbitrary set of participants - but by doing it this way I can demonstrate more of the plugin's features):

[attachment=42801]

Here's Anne's view of the new group conversation after she submits it:

[attachment=42802]

Now "Bill" logs in and sees that he has MyConversations alerts:

[attachment=42803]

He clicks on the "group" alert and sees a listing of conversations in this new group (there is only one, as it is a new group), with a handy green arrow to go straight to the first unread message in that first conversation:

[attachment=42804]

Bill composes a response to Anne, and attaches a PDF to it:

[attachment=42805]

"Cathy" now logs in, sees that she's been added to a (new) conversation, "likes" the two existing messages in it, and replies. Here's how the conversation looks to her after her reply is submitted. On top of demonstrating the "like" feature, this screenshot also showcases conversation quoting: just as in public threads, quotes in conversations "backlink", via a handy green arrow, to the message from which they were quoted.

[attachment=42806]

Finally, to flag this feature, here's the plugin's entry in the ACP plugin page, where you can see that admins are offered the opportunity to migrate as-yet-unmigrated PMs to conversations:

[attachment=42807]

I hope that this gives you guys a reasonable idea of the current state of this plugin... a beta release is not far off, and - again - I would welcome one or two forum admins willing to beta test it in exchange for a commercial licence. Thanks for bearing with me...

It looks good! I like the advanced features and the sidebar for "go to last unread message, " etc.

If I could make one suggestion (and I know it's a work in progress), the interface for creating the groups seems to be a little verbose for what it needs to be. Perhaps a "quick conversation" form might solve this issue? This would allow people to create conversations with multiple participants quickly with the default settings, and would allow the full settings to be available if they need to tweak.

I mostly suggest this because 95% of users are probably just going to add a couple of people to the conversation and start sending messages. In such cases, standard defaults will probably be perfectly sufficient and might make the plugin a little more user-friendly.

In any case, looks nice. Will be following.

Thanks muchly for your feedback, Darth Apple. Yes, you are right, there needs to be a quick-n-easy way to start conversations/groups with default settings that hide the complexity. I will try to come up with something!

Conversations is a high request feature that no one has been able to deliver after numerous attempts. This one looks the most promising this far.

Perhaps one change I would do right away is adding the UCP navigation so it feels just like a replacement of the PM system, but I think most concepts till now have removed it as well.

Good luck with this.

Thanks for your feedback, Omar G. It is very useful. Adding UCP navigation is a very interesting idea. I've had flickers of the thought of that idea at times, but haven't given it careful consideration until now. It certainly seems feasible for a member to be able to place conversations into the same folders as PMs are placed into, with the default folder for conversations being the Inbox. Maybe the Sent Items folder would list by default only conversations in which the member has already posted a response, or perhaps we would simply disable that folder. The Compose link could easily (although I say that having not yet looked at the available hooks, which might make it harder) be redirected to a "Start new conversation" page. I'm not sure what we'd do with the "Tracking" link - maybe try to disable it, pending further thought on how this plugin will support (or not) indications that another member in a conversation has read messages in it.

Yes, it seems workable. I am not sure that it will be supported in the initial beta release (I want to make this plugin available as quickly as I can), but it is a strong candidate for a future release.

"What's this?" asks Anne. "Has the developer of this plugin implemented the suggestions of Darth Apple and Omar G.?"

The answer, Anne, is: yes. In the screenshot below, we see Anne checking out how the new quick-start interface would have made it less of a hassle to have started her original group: this time, there's no messy and confusing table with "[Default rights]" and "[owner]" rights, and no enforced second step in which rights must be set - instead, she gets to just enter the group participants' names and click the handy "Quick-Start Group" button to create the new group in a single step, with basic rights auto-assigned to the group's participants (although the rights assignment page can still be accessed by instead clicking "Proceed"). And although we don't see it until the second screenshot below, the same quick-start approach applies to starting new conversations too.

We also see that MyConversations is now integrated into the UCP, and that in the sidebar, its "Conversations" group replaces MyBB's default "Messenger" group, but with some familiar entries, including the same list of folders, and the "Edit Folders" entry.

[attachment=42935]

In this next screenshot, Anne investigates how she could have started her original group conversation with the new quick-start interface. Again, there is no messy and confusing table of participants and their rights: instead there is simply an "Additional Recipients" field in which to stipulate recipients beyond those already in the group, and a one-click "Quick-Start Conversation" button which creates the conversation in one step without the need for a second page of rights assignment (although, as for conversation groups, that second page for rights assignment is still accessible by instead clicking "Proceed").

[attachment=42936]

Here's a screenshot which shows what it would have looked like with the updated plugin for "Cathy" to have logged in after Anne had started her original conversation, and after Bill had then replied. I've added a twist though to show off the new features: this time, Cathy clicks on "User CP" in the forum header and then on the "Inbox" folder in the sidebar below the "Messenger" group.

Notice that she now sees two individual (unread) messages from the same conversation here, just as she would have in the default private message interface - but this interface is presented by MyConversations. If she clicks on either message, she will see it in its conversation view, in the context of the other messages in the conversation, and it will be marked as read.

Notice also that she can, as in the default interface, delete either message, which will move the message to her "Trash Can" folder. The novelty here is that this only deletes the message from her view of the conversation: other conversation participants can, unless they delete it too, still see the message in their own conversation views.

Other folders show individual messages in the same way, and custom folders - using the "Edit Folders" interface, which mimics that of the MyBB core feature - are supported, to and between which individual messages can be moved as desired. Except for the "Trash Can" folder, conversation views are not affected by any folder to which an individual message within the conversation has been moved: the message still shows up in the same place in the conversation.

Notice in this screenshot too that Cathy has added a folder "Saved Messages" using the "Edit Folders" interface, and that she has then checked one of the messages (Bill's) in her "Inbox" folder, and selected the "Saved Messages" folder in the dropdown beside "Move".

[attachment=42937]

In this next screenshot, she has clicked "Move", and then clicked on the "Saved Messages" folder, to which Bill's message has been moved. You can see Bill's message listed in its new folder. Again: this has no effect on the conversation view. Bill's message, despite being in a folder other than the "Inbox", will still show up for Cathy in the same place (as the second message) in the "Welcome to our group hangout!" conversation view.

[attachment=42938]

The other links in the "Conversations" UCP sidebar group do what you'd expect: clicking on "Compose" presents a form to start a new conversation; clicking on "Conversations" lists all conversations in which you're a participant (paginated); "Unread Conversations" does what the "Unread" folder does except that it shows each unread conversation once only (again: paginated), as opposed to once for each unread message in the conversation as the "Unread" folder does; and "Conversation Groups" lists the conversation groups in which the current member is a participant (yes, paginated too).

I think this plugin is ready for beta testing for its first major release, and I've also planned out a series of major releases with a list of features for each one, but I haven't yet made those lists public. I hope to do that soon, as well as to set up a demo site for any of you guys who want to test its features out live for yourselves. As always, comments, criticisms, suggestions, etc are welcome.