Improving your todo notification and assignments flow
Problem
@sarrahvesselov @sarahod @pedroms @cperessini @tauriedavis @hazelyang This is a sneak peak for the ux team to try out :D
Currently it's very hard to filter out the notifications which actually matter. People either resort to using todos within gitlab or use starred emails. Both ways have their downsides. Starring emails is very rigid, and you have to upkeep it manually. Todo's is one big blur, which doesn't scale and isn't properly filterable.
As noticed, todo's isn't a big priority for the product team. However it is the way how we as users can react in a timely manner to the content within gitlab, such as issues and mr's.
What we miss essentially is a way to know if you have a todo on a:
- issue or mr on which you are assigned
- issue or mr with certain milestone assigned to it
- issue or mr with certain labels assigned to it
With these filtering possibilities we once again make todos scale again and just show what's most probably important/in need of your immediate attention.
Therefore I created the following (see image)
It is a bitbar plugin, which is an app with which you can show anything on the mac menu bar through simple shell script (amongst others). Each item is clickable and will open the item in your browser.
Steps to get this installed:
- Have homebrew installed (https://brew.sh/)
- Install bitbar with
brew cask install bitbar
(or download from https://github.com/matryer/bitbar/releases/) - Copy the gitlab plugins within this directory into your own bitbar plugin folder
- Give the file permission to be executed, example:
chmod +x gitlab-todo-checker.3m.sh
(adjust to files copied) - Install jq
brew install jq
to process json files :) - Replace
$GLPRIVATETOKEN
on the second line (also the$
sign :)) with a freshly made gitlab private token at tokens in preferences (check on the api checkbox) - Replace my username in
username=dimitrieh
on the third line with your own username - Remove
source ~/.localrc
line completely (i set this up, as this file is in my public dotfiles, and i don't want my private token visible in that😄 ) - Then (start Bitbar if you have not already) refresh Bitbar and give it a few minutes ;) (refreshing can take up to 4 min due to the amount of api request calls)
- profit and edit the file to your liking ;)
- The number at the top represents your combined todos on assigned issues and mr's (highest priority)
- It is semi real time (refreshes every so many min (Adjustable))
- the todo's app may give errors from time to time, just refresh it
- Problems? hit me up and we'll get it fixed!
Would love to know if this fixes some of the todo woes we have