Mattermost-server: Add Account Settings option to select different notification sounds

[mattermod]

As a user, I want the ability to choose between different notification sound files.

In Account Settings under Notifications > Desktop notification sounds:

1. Maintain the "On" and "Off" radio buttons
2. Add a drop-down selector between the "off" radio button and the help text when the option is set to "On"
   
   
   
   • The drop-down has the the following sound selections: of "Down", "Crackle", "Hello", "Up", "Ripple"
   
   
3. Update help text: "Notification sounds are available on Firefox, Edge, Safari, Chrome and Mattermost Desktop Apps."

Functionality

1. Clicking to select or pressing ‘return’ after arrowing up or down will select the sound option and close the drop-down list.
2. Selecting a sound will automatically play a single preview of the sound.
3. If the "Off" radio button is selected the drop-down list will be hidden

Resources

1. Design files - https://projects.invisionapp.com/share/42RZ0PGNZS3#/screens/362855855
2. Notification sounds - From Jira here

---

If you're interested please comment here and come join our "Contributors" community channel on our daily build server, where you can discuss questions with community members and the Mattermost core team. For technical advice or questions, please join our "Developers" community channel.

New contributors please see our Developer's Guide.

JIRA: https://mattermost.atlassian.net/browse/MM-467

[teresa-novoa]

@hmhealey can you please add the difficulty and programming languages labels? Thanks!

[rvillablanca]

Hi @hmhealey I will work on this

[hmhealey]

@rvillablanca Awesome, thanks! Let us know if you have any questions or need any help with that.

As usual, the easiest way to reach someone is in the ~developers channel on https://community.mattermost.com.

[rvillablanca]

@hmhealey PR was created :point_up: :)

[bladernr]

Why did no one suggest user provided sounds? I stumbled across the Design Ticket for this, which led me here. I'm quite baffled by the fact that everyone jumped in on a specific set of sound files, which are all mp3 files... but no one even seemed to consider simply doing what most IRC clients do, and that's simply use user provided sound files that meet certain requirements (certain format, e.g. wav or mp3, certain size (less than XX KB)).

I tried filing a feature request but this already addresses 85% of my request, the remaining 15% is simply a standard file dialog that allows me to chose my own notification sound, which arguably is a LOT more to my liking, and more likely to be noticed by me (with severe tinnitus and some hearing loss) than any of the ones that are included in that design discussion.

I mean, if the mecanism is already there to allow one to pick from 5 sounds, presumably that just creates a pointer so that when $NOTIFICATION is triggered, the system plays the sound file in $LOCATION, so why not a file dialog that creates that pointer with MY sound files? Unless I misread that discussion and missed that key piece. I'll gladly accept that I missed that part of the discussion somewhere... but user provided / chosen sounds would be a lot more satisfying and user friendly several more sounds that people with hearing issues may have difficulties with.

[teresa-novoa]

@hmhealey can you please take a look at this ticket´s comments, thanks!

[hmhealey]

That'd be more of a question for @esethna since he worked with the designers on this, but if I had to guess, a list of preset notification sounds was the easiest way for us to get a sound selection into the program to begin with. I don't know how much using custom sounds were explored, but from the technical side, that would probably require some server-side changes to store the sound on the server since the web app would probably need access to the sound as well. Note that the desktop app is mostly a wrapper around the web app, so that sometimes limits our options a bit for being able to use local files.

If you are however using the desktop app, I think the in-app notification sound is actually replaced by the one from the OS, so it might be possible to customize the sounds that the OS uses for that?

That all said, we could still look at supporting custom sounds in a followup to this ticket as well.

[esethna]

@bladernr Totally agree custom user provided sounds can be a next iteration of this. Do you have an example of a service that allows custom sound uploads? I opened a ticket for this here to get design input: https://mattermost.atlassian.net/browse/MM-27308

We can certainly open this up as help wanted (accepting community contributions) if you're interested after we get some dev and UX eyes on it ;)

[bladernr]

On Mon, Jul 27, 2020 at 1:42 PM Eric Sethna [e-mail]
wrote:

@bladernr https://github.com/bladernr Totally agree custom user
provided sounds can be a next iteration of this. Do you have an example of
a service that allows custom sound uploads? I opened a ticket for this here
to get design input: https://mattermost.atlassian.net/browse/MM-27308

So yes and no... I realized after reading a reply on a different thread
that the desktop app (which is what I was referring to, but failed to be
clear about, I think) is really more or less a wrapper for the web app. So
if using the web apps, I don't know of any, but for stand-alone tools,
pretty much any standalone IRC client ( like Hexchat, XChat2, etc) provided
a way to point to locally hosted sound files (I usually keep a directory
specifically for these small .wav and .mp3 files that are used by my IRC
client for various events) and triggers would result on those local files
being played. I failed to take into account the fact that mattermost is
apparently more server-side than client-side, so I now wonder just how
realistic this request is :(

Someone had mentioned that they believed the desktop app would use system
sounds, but so far (On Ubuntu) I have yet to figure out how to get that to
happen, the MM desktop application is using the built in alert. That said
it could be that I've just not configured something correctly so that MM
Desktop on Ubuntu will use the system sounds over builtins.

We can certainly open this up for conrtibutions if you're interested after

we get some dev and UX eyes on it ;)

—
You are receiving this because you were mentioned.
Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub
https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost-server/issues/14784#issuecomment-664540001,
or unsubscribe
https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABAYWSH44YEQQ3H6KFDUNQDR5W4ARANCNFSM4NZR43GQ
.

[gkatsanos]

Hey guys, is the Stand-alone application of Mattermost also getting this feature? The default notification sounds are pretty problematic given that they are the same as many other applications (on mac at least)

[hmhealey]

@gkatsanos Yeah, it's supported in the latest version of the desktop app (4.6.1)