When I just created a new test user I noticed that the screen blackout that is supposed to highlight the arrival of the bot’s welcome message no longer occurs. The message arrives after the specified 60 seconds but there’s no blackout. Is this a regression?
No it does not but why is that relevant? You’re saying this is a bug where the spotlight never happens.
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I was saying that it doesn’t happen when there is a delay, so I wanted to test it under those exact conditions since my hunch was that this may have something to do with the delay. Anyway, I tried on try and the screen is black the very moment you activate the account. So it is working fine as long as there is no delay. If you set a delay of 60 seconds or so on try, I can try again.
I’ve edited the title of your topic as it was wildly incorrect.
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May I ask why you think it should work? It seems like a horrible user experience.
If I’m a minute into reading topics on your site and all of a sudden it blacks out to show the Wycombe message… it comes off as a bit pushy/annoying.
The idea with the delay was to avoid an even worse UX where you are joining a forum because you’re interested in something and then the first thing that you see is a black screen and some bot tries to get your attention. Whether one minute is the right setting is a matter of testing.
The spotlight will only happen when the first PM arrives, so this is basically “correct as designed” – delay the first PM, you’ve delayed the spotlight. Otherwise there would be a spotlight on… nothing?
Right. But IIRC, the spotlight only occurs on the first notification and that notification is the welcome pm (they did not receive or read any other notification)
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I don’t understand the “but” here. What’s the point you’re trying to make?
As quoted above, if the user reads any notification prior to the welcome PM arriving, the black spotlight will not activate.
I’m confused. Are you suggesting this as the reason why I’m not seeing the spotlight? To be clear: the spotlight is not showing for an entirely new user who has not received or read any PM prior to the Welcome PM arriving. Condition: discourse narrative bot welcome post delay is not zero.
The spotlight will only show for the first PM, and should show the spotlight at the time the first PM arrives.
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FYI, I have no repro on this. It worked fine on my up-to-date sandbox.
- Set the delay to 60, made sure narrative bot was sent to send the tutorial.
- Created a new account, browsed the forum after clicking the activation link
- Did not do any replies, likes, or other activity that may generate a notification
- Did not click on my user avatar
- 60 seconds later, spotlight occurred and PM with tutorial received.
I’m going to try a few more scenarios as well (posting a reply, liking a post, clicking the avatar), to see if any of that makes a difference.
Edited with more scenarios:
Click on your avatar/profile menu
- Set the delay to 60, made sure narrative bot was sent to send the tutorial.
- Created a new account, browsed the forum after clicking the activation link
- Did not do any replies, likes, or other activity that may generate a notification
- Did click on my user avatar (top right)
- 60 seconds later, PM received, no spotlight
Replying to a Topic before the 60 second delay is up (Needs Approval Queue)
- Set the delay to 60, made sure narrative bot was sent to send the tutorial.
- Created a new account, browsed the forum after clicking the activation link
- Did not do click on the user avatar (top right) or perform any likes, or other activity that may generate a notification
- Reply to a topic
- Topic got placed in Needs Approval Queue
-
Spotlight occurred for the “Account temporarily on hold” PM.
(prematurely, around 30 seconds after activation) - 60 seconds later, Greetings! PM received
Replying to a Topic before the 60 second delay is up
- Set the delay to 60, made sure narrative bot was sent to send the tutorial.
- Created a new account, browsed the forum after clicking the activation link
- Did not do click on the user avatar (top right) or perform any likes, or other activity that may generate a notification
- Reply to a topic
- Topic did not got placed in Needs Approval Queue
- 60 seconds later, spotlight occurred and PM with tutorial received.
Like a Topic before the 60 second delay is up
- Set the delay to 60, made sure narrative bot was sent to send the tutorial.
- Created a new account, browsed the forum after clicking the activation link
- Did not do click on the user avatar (top right) or reply to a topic, or other activity that may generate a notification
- Like any post/topic
- 60 seconds later, spotlight occurred and PM with tutorial received.
Reply to a Topic and Receive a Like before the 60 second delay is up
- Set the delay to 60, made sure narrative bot was sent to send the tutorial.
- Created a new account, browsed the forum after clicking the activation link
- Did not do click on the user avatar (top right) or perform any likes, or other activity that may generate a notification
- Reply to a topic
- Topic did not got placed in Needs Approval Queue
- User B likes your reply
- Notification of Like is shown (did not click on avatar)
- 60 seconds later, spotlight occurred and PM with tutorial received.
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Okay, out of my testing, I see possibly two scenarios that could use improvement? (maybe)
-
It seems, just clicking on the user menu avatar will prevent the spotlight from occurring (regardless if there are any notifications to be seen). I’m not sure if that is intended or not.
-
The spotlight can get invoked for a fast reply that hits the Needs Approval Queue, and not just for the Greetings PM. It also causes it to happen before the delay is actually finished. So instead of happening at 1 minute, it happened around 30 seconds because that is when my reply was put into the queue and the Needs Approval PM was sent.
I have not found any other way to stop the spotlight effect from happening (or to cause it to happen prematurely).
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The spotlight is shown for the first notification and is not dependent on the bot’s PM in anyway. It works with the bot’s PM because the PM is the first notification to arrive when there is no delay.
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See however:
Thanks for extensive testing @cpradio. Yes, I did click the avatar before the 60 seconds were up in order to get to the user’s preferences.
Fixed this in
https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/cbedc1a2ca5734a6767bfdd298f42e39bbf20f6f
@cpradio Thank you for the detailed reproductions steps! 
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