Improved Bookmarks with Reminders

[martin (Martin Brennan)]

We have improved the existing bookmark functionality in 2.5.0.beta3. All existing post_actions bookmarks will be migrated when you update your Discourse forum. Here is a summary of all the fancy new features

Bookmark naming and reminders

When you bookmark a post or a topic a modal window will now show up with various options.

You can click save or simply click out of the modal and a normal bookmark will be saved, with no name or reminder (note how “No reminder needed” is selected by default). You can now also specify a name for the bookmark to help you remember why you bookmarked it. Otherwise you can choose from the following:

• Later today — Now + 3 hours, rounding to half-hour intervals. Cutoff time for this is 5pm (so 2pm is the latest you can select this option).
• Next business day — Mon-Fri at 8am. On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday this option will be Monday, the rest of the time it will be the same as Tomorrow.
• Tomorrow
• Next week — Now + 7 days at 8am.
• Next month — The current date next month at 8am.
• Custom date and time — Allows you to specify your own date and time for the reminder.

Any time the “Custom date and time” option is selected we we will remember the input you chose and next time you bookmark a post another reminder option will be shown:

• Last — The last entered custom date and time, as long as that date and time is in the future

Setting topic-level bookmarks and clearing bookmarks for a whole topic works the same way as what it used to.

Additionally, you can specify an auto-delete option for bookmarks:

Reminder notifications

We send reminder notifications in five minute batches, so delivery of custom reminders will not occur on the dot. This means if you set a custom reminder for 8:33am (if you are a very specific person) your reminder will come through at 8:35am at the earliest. Any failed notifications we will retry in the next batch. Bookmark reminder notifications are high priority which means they will be treated like PM notifications. They get a green notification bubble, and will stick to the top of your list of notifications until read.

Once a reminder is sent the reminder time and type is cleared but the bookmark remains. Clicking on the post bookmark icon opens the modal window to allow you to set a new reminder.

Here is what a bookmark reminder notification looks like:

Lists and navigation

The bookmarks in the quick navigation bar now come from the new table and will show you if you have a reminder set for the bookmark:

In the user profile activity page the Bookmarks link now shows a new list of bookmarks. From here you can see what you named the bookmark as well as the time the reminder will be sent. You can also search your bookmarks.:

Editing and Deleting

You can edit the name and reminder of a bookmark either by clicking the “Edit Bookmark” button from the actions dropdown in the bookmark list, or by clicking on the bookmark icon for a post:

Deleting a bookmark can either be done from the bookmark list or from the bookmark modal as a 2-step process (after you click on the bookmark post icon), and an additional confirmation is shown if you have a reminder set for the bookmark:

Keyboard Shortcuts

You can use keyboard shortcuts to select the type of reminder you want for your bookmark and to save the bookmark. A full list of shortcuts can be found in the ? help menu.

Syncing Reminders to Calendar

If you would like to see your reminders as events in your favourite calendar application, @Falco has created a .ics calendar feed. See Sync Bookmark Reminders with your favorite Calendar app for more details.

Still to come

We have a few future improvements planned including:

Improving the bookmark list
Recurring reminders
Reminder time parameter customisation

Any feedback on this new feature here on Meta would be appreciated

[franciscom (Francisco)]

I’m very excited! This new system will be very useful

[Stephen]

This is turning out to be the best feature I didn’t know I wanted

Out of curiosity, what was the inspiration?

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

… more seriously, what even was the point of bookmarks before this? Your browser already does bookmarking for you, doesn’t it? Bookmarking is where information goes to die!

I wanted to turn a terrible, pointless feature into a useful one.

[HAWK]

@Stephen

Out of curiosity, what was the inspiration?

It all started back last October when I moaned about not being able to properly manage my topics in a way that wasn’t public. I wanted some kind of system of private/personal tags.

We decided that extending bookmarks with times and labels was a better approach because it would also deprecate the rather clunky “Set a reminder” topic timers.

[Stephen]

It’s a huge improvement. Bookmarks were previously where links went to die*.

I’ve just cleared out my local bookmarks, and am experimenting with ways to remind myself about bookmarks everywhere else…

* Crediting Jeff for that line, forgot he said the same thing a couple of posts up

[ondrej]

Literally… I press bookmark and found stuff I forgot why I bookmarked it because I didn’t have a reminder. Now I do yay!

[Pad_Pors]

one of the best features ever! thanks Discourse-Team .

[jord8on (Jordan)]

This would be a phenomenal addition to Discourse, making bookmarks ACTIONable!

[Ellibereth]

I get sent to the right page when clicking on the icon now

Be great if could see the authors of the bookmarked post at the page (https://meta.discourse.org/my/activity/bookmarks-with-reminders) too, especially since you can see them in the “menu” version of bookmarks. Bit weird to have info available in one and not the other.

[tophee (Christoph)]

@Stephen

Out of curiosity, what was the inspiration?

I have no insight into the exact dynamics that contributed to this excellent feature, but I suppose these earlier discussions were somehow part of it:

Ability to tag a bookmark/star

I think it would be great if you had the ability to tag a given bookmark/starred item. For example, if you have a feedback forum or support forum and you want to organize your bookmarks/starred items, currently you don’t have the ability to differentiate between any of your bookmarks. If you could tag them (note: this tag is personal to you only) you could organize items into whatever makes sense for you.

Bookmark labels to save for later

Hi, We use Discourse at work. I spend a couple of hours a day on it replying and reading all the posts. When I read something but I don’t have time to reply I would like a way to save the post. There is Bookmarking feature available but I use it to save important posts that I refer from time to time. This would also be great if I want to read posts on mobile, save them, and then reply when I have access to laptop. It would be really helpful if there was a feature that would allow me to save …

Naming bookmarks

Same feature was discussed in above topic. Take my usecase for example. I am new to Discourse and actively follow meta. Currently I have more than 60 or 70 bookmarks i guess. These bookmarks include topics related to plugins, multisite, how-to’s, features etc. In future If I have some doubt in multisite configuration, I can just goto that bookmark label and dig through the topics. If not I have to search in my entire bookmarks for related topics(more noice). I am facing similar issue on Quor…

Bookmark list filtering by tag, category and more

I‘d like to share a small feature request with you… Bookmarking at Discourse is really nice. But the one and only way to find some BM again, is to know the title / buzzword or time frame of adding. Usually, none of them are saved in my brain. That’s why I use bookmarks overall I wish, i could filter the results by all the filter criteria of the default search. What do you think about it? [image] On the other hand side, it might be easier to add „I‘ve bookmarked“ to the search? …

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

If you are a real Discourse OG you remember stars and the star versus bookmark debate …

[Bathinda (Bathinda Helper)]

Eagerly awaiting such a wonderful feature.
Gem among gems.

[bartv (Bart)]

Minor issue: clicking the ‘x’ icon or outside the dialog will not cancel the current action, but save it instead.

[Bathinda (Bathinda Helper)]

When can normal users like us expect to have this wonderful feature in our installations?

[martin (Martin Brennan)]

We have now promoted the Improved Bookmarks with Reminders to a core feature, available to everybody, with the new 2.5.0.beta3. All existing post_actions bookmarks will be migrated when you update your Discourse forum. Feedback is encouraged and welcome!

I have updated the OP with a more accurate description of the features. The following important changes have been made recently:

• Bookmarks with reminders can now be edited.
• Deleting bookmarks is now a 2-step process completed from the modal window, and a confirmation is shown if you are deleting a bookmark with a reminder.
• Keyboard shortcuts have been added to select a reminder type and navigate the bookmark modal.
• “Later Today” is now available until 5pm, and the later time is capped to 6pm. So from 3pm-5pm you will be able to see and use this reminder option but it will not go later than 6pm.

[gingerman]

Lovely work.

Awesome to see the tab snooze extension like functionality (explained below) in a discourse native way.

How to get email notifications when new users have signed up?

If you like the approach Jeff shared, using “Tab Snooze” is a quick and free way to automate what he suggested ︎ Using a chrome browser, click the link below and install Tab Snooze Visit your forum instance https://YOUR_FORUM_URL/admin/users/list/new Click the newly added🌜moon (Tab Snooze) icon, next to your URL address bar Choose the “Repeatedly” option [image] Then select your cadence (i.e. Daily, Weekly, Monthly, etc.) and time/days of wk [image] That’s it! This tab will open…

[pnoeric (Eric)]

This is a very cool feature and I like the idea of reminders… but I also recognize this is not something my members will like or enjoy at this moment. Is it possible to disable the new reminder option? If not, is there a hook available so I can write a plugin to do so?

(Yes, I know they can dismiss the reminder dialog with a click and ignore it. But my community is in a funny place, they’re adapting very slowly to the new Discourse software, and it’s still on delicate ground. Many of my members still use bookmarks to keep track of topics they want to visit regularly-- yes, I know that’s redundant and Discourse does a better job managing this automatically than they will manually!-- but that’s the situation I’m in. Trust me, I can feel that this isn’t a good time to start rocking the boat with a new dialog box that they weren’t expecting, as simple and clear as it is. I’d love to turn this on later but turn it off for now.)

[tobiaseigen]

@jomaxro

ICalendar feed for Bookmark reminders

This will be super handy. I am not able to see a way to subscribe to an ical feed for my bookmark reminders - am I missing something or is it still in the works?

Edit: ah, here it is: Sync Bookmark Reminders with your favorite Calendar app

[martin (Martin Brennan)]

@pnoeric

This is a very cool feature and I like the idea of reminders… but I also recognize this is not something my members will like or enjoy at this moment. Is it possible to disable the new reminder option? If not, is there a hook available so I can write a plugin to do so?

@codinghorror we did that similar thing for the discobot, would you support adding this as a default false site setting (skipping the reminder modal)?