Sidebar reorganization

[csduarte]

Note

FYI, for anyone looking for this feature, this PR was reverted before v5.2 was released and the feature is still in progress. You can follow the progress here: #1568.

Summary

This includes work on a sidebar reorganization to support multiple options as a user for displaying channels in the sidebar.

Users are now able to:

1. Group by channel,
2. Group by no order
3. Unreads at top is optional
4. Favorites at top is optional
5. Sort by recency
6. Sort by alphabetical order

Checklist

[Place an '[x]' (no spaces) in all applicable fields. Please remove unrelated fields.]

• Has redux changes (please link)
• Has UI changes
• Includes text changes and localization file (.../i18n/en.json) updates

Screenshots

• Different variations of sidebar preferences

• Sidebar preference settings

[miguelespinoza]

I'll be working on test next.
I'm currently going to point the mattermost-redux library to our fork so there can be manual testers taking a look

[miguelespinoza]

I missed committing the redux library last Friday. Did that this morning so will have to rebuild the server. I'm working on having passing test. Will commit that shortly

[esethna]

Awesome, thanks @miguelespinoza! Excited to test this. I think we were going to submit these as experimental config settings? Can you help add the server PR and update this so those settings are hidden unless enabled by the config? Proposing:

1. ExperimentalGroupChannelsByType with options "disabled", "default_on", "default_off"
2. ExperimentalSortChannelsByRecency with options "disabled", "default_on", "default_off"

Similar to how the ExperimentalGroupUnreadChannel config works:

[miguelespinoza]

@esethna we've made some modifications to the changes we discussed.

First of all we're going with one config for the feature. ExperimentalSidebarPreference. We believe the system works best if the entire feature is exposed, both Channel Grouping and Channel Sorting.

Furthermore, we are removing ExperimentalGroupUnreadChannels from the webapp. The idea is to enable ExperimentalSidebarPreference by default and allowing the new channel ordering system to take precedence over the old implementation.

This eliminates any overhead or making sure the users transfer correctly.

To the user, nothing will change we respect their GroupUnreadChannels preference and save it in the new system.

[miguelespinoza]

FYI, The build error is coming from latest master. Looks like there were changes that did update test

[esethna]

@miguelespinoza So to verify,

1. ExperimentalSidebarPreference is turned off by default?
2. Servers that had ExperimentalGroupUnreadChannels turned on will now have ExperimentalSidebarPreference turned on after the upgrade completes?
3. The user preference for the unread section will migrate to the new grouping settings?
4. When the config is enabled there are no sidebar changes for end users unless they specifically change the settings in Account Settings?

Can we please change the config title to “ExperimentalChannelOrganization“ since we have another config for the sidebar section that’s unrelated (closes DMs after 7 days of inactivity).

[miguelespinoza]

@esethna

ExperimentalSidebarPreference is turned on by default
This ensures that the ExperimentalGroupUnreadChannels gets deprecated with zero effort

3. The user preference for the unread section will migrate to the new grouping settings?
   If the user enabled/disabled unreads section this is reflected in the new system

4. When the config is enabled there are no sidebar changes for end users unless they specifically change the settings in Account Settings?
   There's no sidebar changes for the end user when the system is in place. It will reflect what you see now on Mattermost. Once the user sees new settings they can start using them

I can change the config to ExperimentalChannelOrganization that's fine.

Hopefully this makes sense. Thanks 😄

[esethna]

Thanks @miguelespinoza, the only problem is that we cannot have experimental features turned on by default. This has to be a conscious choice of the System Administrator to enable such features.

My proposal would be that

1. If ExperimentalGroupUnreadChannels is enabled > then we enable ExperimentalChannelOrganization and migrate the user account settings from the unread section.
2. If ExperimentalGroupUnreadChannels is disabled > then we do not enable ExperimentalChannelOrganization

[esethna]

Hey @miguelespinoza just checking in, let me know if you need any clarification on the items we discussed.

[miguelespinoza]

@esethna haven't had time to allocate to this PR, but planning on getting back to it in the coming days

[miguelespinoza]

@esethna The server PR mattermost/mattermost#9013
It has been updated to support the feature if the GroupUnreads flag is enabled.

Once server PR is merged we can move forward with the redux and webapp PR.
Also, FYI we are working on getting a mobile PR for this feature soon.

[miguelespinoza]

@esethna once
server: mattermost/mattermost#9013
redux: mattermost/mattermost-redux#549
are merged this can get reviewed

[amyblais]

FYI, for anyone looking for this feature, this PR was reverted before v5.2 was released and the feature is still in progress. You can follow the progress here: #1568.

[ankurloriya]

FYI, for anyone looking for this feature, this PR was reverted before v5.2 was released and the feature is still in progress. You can follow the progress here: #1568.

We are waiting for this kind of feature

[lieut-data]

@ankurloriya, have you experimented with https://docs.mattermost.com/administration/config-settings.html#sidebar-organization-experimental?

[ankurloriya]

@lieut-data Ahhh our MatterMost server version v4.8. Let me call my system admin to upgrade to version 5.13