Better visibility needed.

[R0Z-Z]

Steps to reproduce

None

Expected behaviour

This is more likely a feature request. Anouncements should draw more attention. Perhaps, changing app's top bar icon to red and making it pulse distinctively may help people to notice it.

Lack of sound warnings is a really annoying issue on browsers; people do not notice things while they are working on other tabs or workspaces. I guess this sound notification issue is a more fundamental problem beyond this app. Anyway, a sound warning is sorely needed in browsers. I hoped announcement center could alleviate this need to an extent, if its icons were in an eye-catching color and even animated when an announcement is received. Another suggestion might be, marking anouncement's notification in a special distinctive colour and put it always on top of the list than other standard message notifications.

Actual behaviour

No sound warning, not distinguishable from standard notifications, no special priority and color in notifications.

Server configuration

Operating system:
Centos 7
Web server:
Apache
Database:
MariaDB
PHP version:
7.3
Nextcloud version: (see Nextcloud admin page)
21.0.4
Where did you install Nextcloud from:
GitHub

Client configuration

Browser:
Firefox 92
Operating system:
Linux 5.4.0 / X11

[nickvergessen]

Would an email option be something useful for you?

Or can you give an example what kind of announcement you mean so we can judge a bit the necessarity of the alert factor?

Most announcements I'm aware of are system update windows and onboarding of new colleagues which then are okay if you only see them in the activity email.

[R0Z-Z]

We are not using e-mail notifications because of some hard-to-explain security measures beyond my control.

We mostly use talk plugin for internal work meetings and instant messaging. Unfortunately, it is not easy to reach people instantaneously because of latter mentioned lacking sound notifications issue. If users have talk app on their phones, they may respond; but if they get a message from an active/selected conversation on their browsers, their phones do not bleep. All in all, we need sound alerts in browsers and on the phones regardless of circumstances except it was explicitly disabled by user.

After I added notifications center, few people noticed its icon. I sent an anouncement, people were unaware of its existence after a day. Since this is an anouncement, you want to make sure everybody notice it. When I say "system reboot in 10 minutes", I want it to be noticed in time. Sending an email does not solve the problem, since people's mailboxes are many times bloated with waiting-to-be-read mails, and an new mail does not alert them much.

Anouncement center may help a bit about this, but users should notice something important happening on the page. Notifications get sometimes bloated with unread or missed ones while away from computer, and unfortunately I see people rarely check it. So, in addition to standard notifications, anouncements icon could turn red and grow in size, or may pulsate until checked. Browser tab icon also could change to anouncements icon in red. You may also display it on top of notification list with red bg color.

One final idea might be to integrate it -in case it is installed- with talk plugin, creating a special message body again with a red or user selectable backgroud color. It would also be nice to know who read it.