Re: First look: improved email handling in the datatracker

[Robert Sparks <[e-mail]>]

On 9/2/15 5:30 PM, Fred Baker (fred) wrote:
> Thanks for this. I'm working my way through it.
>
> One question I have - to what extent will this use a person's email address, and to what extent will it use the function they perform's email address?
Right now, when copying draft authors, it will use 
[e-mail] (not tools.ietf.org).
You can see this by looking at 
dt-test.rjsparks.org/doc/draft-whatever-i-am-doing/email.
(Here's a link you can just click on: 
https://dt-test.rjsparks.org/doc/draft-ietf-sipcore-refer-clarifications/email/)

The To: and Cc: headers that show in the "Recipient Expansions" section 
are literally what goes into the headers of the messages.

I understand the use-case you point to below. We could change the way 
the recipient expansion of the various things that are pointing to the 
role-based aliases to use the content of those aliases, but there's a 
tradeoff - you lose some signalling of why people got copied (it will 
usually be easy for you to say "I got copied because I'm an author", but 
you might not be able to quickly see from looking at the message you 
just received why this guy over here was copied.


> For example, I get a fair bit of email as [e-mail], and from my perspective I would be just as happy if it came to my address as found in the document metadata - that way I don't have to update my filters to be looking for that address. On the other hand, I get a fair bit of mail as [e-mail], and my filters sweep that into my v6ops folder, organizing it well. The former changes every time I write a new draft; the latter changes on state occasions.
>
> So now going through your web page, does this mean that "if I'm the <person identified> I will receive the message", or "if I'm the <person identified> I will receive the message using my personal email address"? If the latter, I might create an address that allows me to sort things in filters.
>
>> On Sep 2, 2015, at 2:12 PM, Robert Sparks <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>> WG Chairs :
>>
>> At this year's IAB/IESG retreat we discussed making the recipients of the email messages the datatracker sends more configurable, reducing the number of messages sent for a given action, and making the messages themselves more meaningful.
>>
>> One of the primary goals was to make it so that the people who needed to receive each message would receive the message by default, and we would stop doing things like putting document shepherds in the notify field. The intent now is for the notify field to be empty most of the time, only containing addresses that are special cases.
>> We made a great deal of progress on this front and have some changes ready for you to look over and test. There are many things here that need feedback. Please take a few moments to look this over.
>>
>> Start with <https://dt-test.rjsparks.org/mailtoken/token> (This is a development instance of the tracker - you can log in as anyone using their datatracker login name and the password "password"). You'll see a list of actions on the left, and recipients on the right. Mouse over any of them for a short pop-up description. You can focus on a particular action by going to, for example, <https://dt-test.rjsparks.org/mailtoken/token/last_call_issued/>
>>
>> The recipients listed are table driven - the secretariat can change them. Note that the actions are configured at the moment to reach more people than the production system currently does in many cases. One of the most important things you can do is provide feedback on whether we have the set of recipients for a given action right. Another is whether we have the right actions listed - in other words, are there times when we send email now that we shouldn't, and are there other times where we aren't sending email that we should? (Note that there are small number of places that the tracker sends email that are not yet using this system, but if you spot a place that's not covered here, please ask about it.)
>>
>> Before brute-forcing your way through the first link above, however, let me introduce a few other new things. If you go to a specific document, or a group, there is now a tab on the main page that shows what the email expansions turn into for that document or group. For example, look at <https://dt-test.rjsparks.org/doc/draft-ietf-sipcore-refer-clarifications> and note the "Email expansions" tab that takes you to <https://dt-test.rjsparks.org/doc/draft-ietf-sipcore-refer-clarifications/email/>
>>
>> The way each recipient is computed is shown at <https://dt-test.rjsparks.org/mailtoken/recipient/> Again, you can hover over a token for a short text description, or focus on a particular recipient using, for example, <https://dt-test.rjsparks.org/mailtoken/recipient/doc_shepherd>
>>
>> Wherever possible, the recipient is expanded using a Django template. When the logic for expanding a recipient is too complicated for a template, the work is done using a short function, as shown on the recipient page. As we go forward, we'll be working to simplify this gathering process so that many of the recipients that require functions now can be moved into templates (but it will be important to not just bury the details of the truly complicated recipients - one of the other goals of this project is to make it less of a mystery where mail is sent)
>>
>> Now, the IESG will be particularly interested in one special case: Look at the list of recipients for ballot_saved. The save-and-send email form will offer all of the addresses that are expanded from these recipients and allow the AD to chose which recipient tokens to actually use (by default, all are selected). When logged in as an AD or the Secretariat, go to <https://dt-test.rjsparks.org/doc/draft-ietf-sipcore-refer-clarifications/ballot/425017/emailposition/?ad=107190>
>>
>> Here are a few other highlights from the changes made so far:
>> * The secretariat has been sending the internal-review and new-work
>>    messages manually. The Datatracker now assists with those messages.
>> * The mail sent when issuing ballots has been simplified
>> * Instead of a generic "state changed" message, recipients get a message
>>    that says
>>    - Comment has been added
>>    - Intended publication status changed
>>    - Document has been adopted by group
>>    - IESG is proccessing this document
>>
>> Finally, there is a script that will run when this is deployed (it has been run already on this test instance) that will scrub recipients that should be normally copied out of the Notify field for each document. The leadership associated with the document will get an email message explaining the change. The IESG will get a message for all the docs that do not have currently active leadership associated with them (that message to the IESG will be long). Currently, when that script runs it reports: Changed 4858 documents. 3775 of those had their notify field emptied
>>
>> An example of the message that gets sent is at: <http://www.nostrum.com/~rjsparks/example_notify_email.txt>
>>