Spoke: Feature Request: Inbox display of conversations

[arena]

Problem
It is difficult to see the replies you've gotten as a texter at a glance. It is also difficult to go back and find an interesting conversation. Often, as a texter, you'll want to handle a certain type of reply first (e.g. "yes, I'll vote. Where's my polling place??") but the only way to go through replies is one by one.

Solution
An inbox display organized by campaign that shows all the conversations, a preview of the most recent message, and their state (open, handled, bookmarked*, ..., etc)

Context
texter ui: dashboard

[ibrand]

@arena were you imagining something akin to the Warren/Thrutext sidebar? Or is this actually meant for the todo screen?

[arena]

@ibrand No, nothing like ThruText because I think that really slows down responding time and Spoke should stay efficient. I am imagining this for the ToDos screen

[arena]

I imagine something very much like Gmail or another email client with a way to sort by campaign ... needs some details and design but the user needs are:

• scan conversations for things that seem urgent
• scan conversations for things that need follow up
• archive conversations
• show what's new and unread (unhandled)
• see what's been bookmarked (starred)

Ideally, you would also be able search your conversations for a keyword or contact name.

This would also open up the possibility for multi-select and then batching manual responses. e.g. let me take care of all these trolls first and then enjoy a session of responding.

[Frydafly]

Looping in @agreenspan24 who has done some really cool work in his fork of Spoke related to creating a texter inbox sidebox!

[agreenspan24]

Just also going to tag the Colorado version of the code, which is based off of Spoke v8: https://github.com/agreenspan24/Spoke/pull/27

We could use this as a starting point at least!

[arena]

It's interesting indeed, my main comments are that any improvements to navigating conversations will:

1. work on mobile
2. still support auto-advance for rapid responding (something that spoke does better than other apps)

[DinahSanders]

Querying whether there really needs to be bookmarking/starring. Wouldn't these message states be sufficient?

• unsent initial texts
• sent but no reply from contact [not shown in texter views of conversations]
• unread replies
• unhandled replies (read but skipped)
• responded ('Past Messages' / archive)

If the default behavior after reading a message and responding is to move it to Past Messages (renamed 'Archive')
and
if the Archive is easily searchable (or at least viewable as a reverse chronological list showing the last reply, somewhat like Mobile Commons),
doesn't that cover everything we need?