About the Project

The OpenWISP Notifications Module provides email and web notifications for the OpenWISP platform. Its primary goal is to enable other OpenWISP modules to notify users about significant events occurring within their network. Offering timely and relevant notifications helps users stay informed about critical activities and changes within their managed infrastructure.

For a complete overview of its features, refer to the features section of the OpenWISP documentation.

My Work on Improving the User Experience (UX)

This summer, I focused on Improving the User Experience (UX) of the Notifications Module. My work involved consolidating notifications into single emails to prevent inbox flooding, implementing global preferences for easier notification management, and developing a REST API for administrators. Additionally, I created a user-friendly interface for managing notification preferences, including direct links in email footers and an unsubscribe option. These enhancements aimed to streamline notification management, reduce inbox clutter, and significantly improve the overall user experience on the OpenWISP platform.

Features Implemented

Batch Email Notifications to Prevent Email Flooding

Batching email notifications helps manage the flow of emails sent to users, especially during increased alert activity. By grouping emails into batches, the system minimizes the risk of emails being marked as spam and prevents inboxes from rejecting alerts due to high volumes.

Key aspects of the batch email notification feature include:

• When multiple emails are triggered for the same user within a short time frame, subsequent emails are grouped into a summary.
• The sending of individual emails is paused for a specified batch interval when batching is enabled.

Pull Request: Batch email notifications #276

Notification Preferences Page

The Notification Preferences Page allows users to manage their notification settings through a user-friendly interface. This enhancement gives users greater control over how they receive notifications, enabling them to disable notifications for all organizations or selectively enable notifications for specific organizations. The page also offers administrators to manage notification preferences for other users.

Key aspects of the notification preference feature include:

• Global Preferences: Users can disable notifications for all organizations or keep notifications enabled for specific organizations only.
• REST API: Administrators can manage the notification preferences of other users via a dedicated API.
• Dedicated View: A user-friendly UI to manage all notification preferences in one place.

Pull Request: Notification Preferences Page #290

Add Unsubscribe Link to Email Notifications

To enhance user control over email notifications, I implemented an unsubscribe link in the footer of all email notifications. This feature allows users to easily manage their email preferences, including opting out of all notifications without logging into the platform. By adding this functionality, we ensure compliance with best practices for email notifications and reduce the likelihood of emails being marked as spam.

Key aspects of the unsubscribe link feature include:

• Manage Notification Preferences: A link in the email footer directs users to the page to manage notification preferences.
• Unsubscribe from All Emails: An option allowing users to turn off all notifications directly from the email.
• List-Unsubscribe Header: Implement the List-Unsubscribe-Header to facilitate the unsubscribe button functionality in email clients.

Pull Request: Add unsubscribe link to email notifications #307

Other Contributions

In addition to my main project, I made several other contributions to the organization, improving various features, fixing bugs, and enhancing the overall functionality of the modules. Here are some of the additional PRs I worked on:

OpenWISP Notifications

• Relative URL for notification links #266
• Do Not Send Email Notifications if User Email is Not Verified #274
• Added generic message notification type (shown in dialog box) #275

OpenWISP Controller

• Unsaved changes alert disable on preview view #857
• Dark table preview when using django-import-export #858
• deviceconnection_unique_together fails due to duplicate objects #861

OpenWISP Monitoring

• Random pause for every 10 successful sent requests #131

My Experience

My GSoC journey with OpenWISP has been an incredible learning experience. I gained valuable skills, particularly in writing tests and reusing existing solutions, which improved my code's efficiency and reliability. The mentors played a huge role in helping me refine my work, offering insightful feedback that enhanced my coding skills and deepened my understanding of open-source development.

What's Next?

As my GSoC journey concludes, I'm excited to keep contributing to OpenWISP and other open-source projects. I plan to focus on fixing bugs, enhancing features, and tackling new challenges. I also look forward to helping new contributors to get started in their open-source journey.