Create to-dos when someone replies to a thread
Release notes
Team leads need to follow discussions in GitLab – even if they're not @-mentioned. Currently, GitLab creates a follow-up to-do only when someone is mentioned, which leads people to miss important replies. This has driven some to abandon to-dos entirely in favor of email notifications.
With this release, GitLab now creates a to-do for all participants when someone replies to a thread. Visit your to-dos list to see new replies – and keep your conversations in GitLab.
Problem to solve
- Users miss replies if they're only using todos (e.g. replies to a thread without being at-mentioned).
- Users that want to be notified of replies to their comments have to use email notifications. This drives them to not use todos at all rather than maintain notifications in two places.
Proposal
Create a to-do for all participants in a discussion when someone replies to a discussion note.
Intended users
This behavior will impact all personas that have discussions within GitLab and use the to-dos feature. During our recent research (mostly internal), the following personas expressed this need most clearly though. We are optimizing for their experience with this issue.
Feature Usage Metrics
- Weekly user retention for the todos page
- Volume of "reply" todos generated
Does this feature require an audit event?
No, this event does not change the behavior or configuration of GitLab instances in a meaningful way.
Original request
Currently, it's only possible to visualize reply notifications via email, with the exception of mentions. However, this clutters the mail inbox. GitLab only shows replies with mentions, which are todo tasks.
It would be much more practical if GitLab had a notification section.
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