[Proposal] Goals for Item-Sharing vis-a-vis: Re: [Last call] Re: [Chandler-dev] Shipping ticketed-URLs around for individual items via email

[Jeffrey Harris]

Hi Mimi,

> Item - Sharing between Desktop User and Hub Collaborator
> *
> 1. Desktop user 'sends' an item to others. This means:
> - Item is automatically published to Hub as a single item if it's not 
> already on server as part of a shared collection
> - Read-write ticket is plopped into message body of the item (Desktop 
> users don't see it, but if you receive the message in your normal email 
> client, you'll see it.)
> 
> - If Desktop user doesn't have sharing account, they are prompted to 
> sign-up for one in order to share the item with a [x] Never show again. 
> checkbox.

This all sounds good to me.

> 2. Recipients receive message in their email clients where they see 
> sharing URL.
> - They click on it and can edit the item in the Hub UI standalone Detail 
> View where they have option to add it to their account; OR
> - If user is already subscribed to that item through a shared collection 
> or has already added it to their account, we should be able to figure 
> that out and take them to the logged-in view of the item (basically 
> jump-link to the item in their account, in the first collection it 
> appears in.)

There's definitely server work to make this happen.  I'm curious to hear 
from Travis and Randy about whether this is a teeny bit of effort, 
medium, or a ton.

> *Item - Sharing between Desktop users*
> 2a. Recipients receive message in their email clients where they see 
> sharing URL
> - They click on it and Chandler Desktop automatically subscribes to the 
> time;

I'm not clear on what mechanism we'd use to get arbitrary mail clients 
to send URL clicks to Chandler Desktop.  We could conceivably use our 
own custom scheme (like webcal:// instead of http://), but that's both 
tricky to get right on all platforms and generally frowned upon.  Also, 
the link wouldn't work for casual collaborators, we'd need two links, 
which is confusing.

Failing a custom scheme, I don't think we can get clicking a link to 
take users directly to Desktop.  We could send them first to the Hub, or 
we could use a localhost link on a well-known port to talk directly to 
the Desktop, either way it'd open up a browser, it wouldn't take you 
directly to the Desktop client.

> OR
> 
> 2b. Recipients receive message in Chandler Desktop where Chandler 
> detects sharing URL and automatically subscribes to item, or if user 
> already has item via Sharing, the message is zapped.
> 
> Does that sound like the right thing to do?

This approach is much closer to what we do now (we could maybe get by 
with just a custom header instead of an EIMML attachment, which might 
let Chandler emails get through Mailman).

The downsides are similar to what we already have; it requires 
configuring mail accounts in Chandler and it's magical (Chandler does 
something people don't expect, if they set up an account, they pretty 
much expect to get all their mail, or nothing).

> - Support downloading email replies to messages sent from Chandler (so 
> you have entire thread in Chandler)

I guess this could be made to work for people who use the 
all-messages-in-their-Inbox filing system, but I think it would be very 
expensive to make this work for all IMAP usage patterns.  I worry that 
doing this would look like not just magic, but unreliable magic.

So, I'm not sure we're on the same page about long-term item-sharing goals.

Sincerely,
Jeffrey