Overview

The platform should provide persistent web, email, and mobile notifications to drive engagement and retention, with centralized learner settings for all notification types. This work builds on previous edX-ace work and more recently edX / 2U work on web notifications and settings.

Key Use Cases / Users

• Learners:

  • Updates and reminders to learn on the go using the Open edX mobile apps to drive engagement and retention.

  • Learners should be able to easily control notifications across all channels (web, email, mobile, etc) centrally in their account settings for both web and mobile apps.

  • A similar notification inbox experience should also be available on the desktop for all open edX instances.

• Educators:

  • Will be able to reconnect with learners off-platform through mobile applications as other modern tools drive much of their engagement.

• Operator / Developer:

  • We should align on a singular path for the platform’s notification architecture to benefit from shared velocity, benefitting from existing work in edX-ACE and recent work edX / 2U has developed in the notifications djangoapp in edx-platform.

Deliverables

• Stage 1 - Platform Technology Alignment for Notification Infrastructure

  • We would like to continue to build our notifications infrastructure centrally in edx-ACE, but we should identify a path for reuse or migration for much of the valuable work done in the notifications djangoapp in edx-platform developed by edX / 2U in 2023 / 2024.

• Stage 2 - Alignment on Product Concept Model for Notifications

  • We should get product alignment on the complex layers and concepts in notifications to ensure we are building a scalable and long term solution for learners and a wide range of open edx instances, including appropriate consideration of extension / customization.

• Stage 3 - Notification Settings (Web)

  • Platform notification settings in the account settings area that will scale to support all subsequent stages as new notification categories + types are added.

• Stage 4 - Web Inbox

  • A web notification inbox should be accessible from the header of the platform for learners and educators, echoing the experience today powered by the notifications django app in edx-platform.

• Stage 5 - Notification Settings (Mobile)

  • The iOS and Android mobile apps should have a similar native notification settings experience with the ability to fallback to a mobile web view embed for settings as well.

• Stage 6 - Mobile Inbox

  • The mobile apps should have both push and persistent inbox notifications that can be configured and rendered in the mobile apps.

• Stage 7- Email Notifications

  • Users should be able to opt in to receive email notifications for certain types of activity.

• Stage 8 - Notification Category: Discussion

  • Web and Mobile notifications for Discussion updates, across various message types. Mobile push notifications configuration to be aligned as well to these.

• Stage 9 - Notification Category: Course Dates

  • Web and Mobile notifications for course dates spanning assignment message types and course milestone (end / start / etc). Considerations for how this overlaps with Course Dates / Calendar Syncing included.

• Stage 10 - Notification Category: Platform / Account

  • Basic messaging for account level updates including account activation or other system updates to be included here.

• Stage 11 - Notification Category: Other

In Scope / Out of Scope

Based on the above use cases, we are breaking down on high-level scope as follows:

MVP Specs

Features & Requirements

In order to realize this MVP, we believe the following features will be required. Refer to the following flow chart for more details: