Too many emails from Review Centre—need daily digest of comments

Scott Holland
edited October 2016 in
Hello,

We only just started using Jama but already my stakeholders are complaining
about the volume of emails generated from review centre. (I know they can
unsubscribe)

Could you please introduce an option to get a daily, aggregated digest of
comments? 

Many thanks, 

Scott

Comments

  • Kristina King
    edited October 2016
    Scott, thanks for sharing this idea. We allow for a digest to be created for item subscriptions, so I agree that it makes sense to offer this for review comments.
  • Scott Holland
    edited June 2016
    Just to add to this - I don't understand why there is such a difference between the comments from "core" Jama and Review Centre comments.

    We're using Review Centre comments a lot and I would like to see them brought up to the same standard as "core" Jama comments:
    1. Nicely formatted HTML emails with a photo of the commenter. They are currently delivered using plain text emails which looks pretty ugly :-) 
    2. Reply to comment via email - you can do this with "core" comments but not review centre comments - why?
    3. Mention people in review centre comments - is there a way to do this? I think there should be - I've found our users are copying and pasting content into emails so they can raise a point with a specific person
    4. Daily digest (as mentioned in the first post)
    Also, whilst I'm having a brain dump - here are some other suggestions for review centre comments:
    1. I would like to be able to mark a comment as "actioned" without pinging out an email to the commenter. Often they just suggest a typo or small change and they end up with dozens of emails saying "acknowledged" 
    2. It would be nice to have an option to send out all of the comments in one go. The workflow I'm thinking would be:
    a) Review closes
    b) Moderator logs in and makes all the changes and replies to all the comments
    c) Once all the changes have been made, the user selects the option to "issue final comments" or similar
    d) All the users get a single email digest which lists out all the replies to their comments

    Thank you!!
  • Kristina King
    edited June 2016
    Scott, thanks for laying this out. As someone who uses the review center every day for reviewing documentation, I agree with your suggestions!
    In terms of why there's a difference, though, I think that might have to do with how the app was built out. 
    The collaboration stream arrived in 4.0, but the review center was shipped in version 2.98. (I am not certain when IMAP was added to allow replying from email, though.) For the most part not much has changed with Review Center since then. But hopefully we update this...I agree that the features are lacking for RC notifications and comments.
  • Jacob Johnston
    edited June 2016
    I'm a +1 on this. Perhaps in addition to a daily digest, there could also be an option for a digest to be generated at the point anyone marks a review as "Finished".
  • Kristina King
    edited June 2016
    That's an interesting way to look at it, Jacob—once the review itself is finalized, all the comments get sent, summarizing the lifecycle of changes?
  • Kimberly Kick
    edited June 2016
    Hi Scott,   I agree with you about the digest,  the high volume of emails does have affect on the exchange server slowing down the sending and receiving of emails.    I am in the beginning of creating test scenarios for the review center is found many things duplicated like comments and versions.  It would be great to have the review center interface with the project.  Thanks  Kimberly
  • Jacob Johnston
    edited October 2016
    Exactly. I find I do want to read the comments and respond in a timely matter, but I want to give each reviewer time to complete their review, then handle all that reviewer's comments at once. Some reviews take a couple of days to complete, some are done in an hour. Having it trigger the email summary when someone marks the review finished seems like it might be one of the better indications of when it is a good time to go look at someone's comments.
  • Scott Holland
    edited June 2016
    Most of our users forget to click on "I'm finished". They add their comments and close the browser...it drives me a little nuts but you have to pick your battles :-)
  • Peter Lovelady
    edited June 2016
    Hi Scott. We are finding the same problems, especially with stakeholders who already have overflowing inboxes. @Kristina, are there any plans to introduce mentioning people from within reviews. We have taken the approach of broad engagement but not all of our stakeholders want to look at every item in a review. Mentioning them would be a useful way of guiding them.
  • Kristina King
    edited June 2016
    I have heard the need a few times to integrate the Stream with the Review Center or at least share comments between the two sections of the application. I don't know of any near-future plans to integrate the two, but I know we need to first migrate the Review Center to the newer UI and then further abilities could be considered. I'll bring this up next time we discuss Review Center.
  • Scott Holland
    edited June 2016
    We're 6 months into using Jama and the volume of review centre emails (and not being able to reply to those emails) is still the number one issue our users moan about
  • Ekaterina Kessner
    edited June 2016
    Hi, as long as it works the way it does in Jama, if you are using Outlook, the user can set up rules to sort out those review center Emails to put them into respective folders, where they do or do not need to react or by some other criteria. I hope it helps somehow..
  • Scott Holland
    edited June 2016
    Hi Ekaterina. Thanks for the suggestion - this is what we're asking our stakeholders to do. However, it's a pain. Most external stakeholder are reluctant to use a new system when they're so used to reviewing in Microsoft Word so I think it's important to make it as frictionless as possible.
  • Tom Green
    edited June 2016
    Agree, Scott.  Remove barriers to adoption.

    In the mean time, you could try the route we took which is to create and export an Outlook email ruleset and create simple 3 step instructions for your users to apply that ruleset.

    Unfortunately, MS Outlook (as far as I know) does not allow command line application of email rulesets - if it did, we could use that method to deploy via IT globally.  Good luck.
    Tom Green
    Thermo Fisher Scientific
  • Kristina King
    edited June 2016
    Thanks for sharing your workaround, Ekaterina. I think it's the best option for now. Scott and Tom, I totally agree with you.
  • Callum Davey
    edited December 2019
    The issues mentioned here are also problems for us.  Is there any plan to introduce more controls for review centre email notifications ?
  • Ashley Ernst
    edited November 2023

    I know this doesn't totally address the ideas in this thread, however, I'd like to share that with 9.7 there will be a reduction of review center emails:

    • Review due date reminders will no longer be sent to review participants who have completed their review
    • We have added an additional control to turn off email notifications to moderators and/or review participants when any review participant has completed their review
    ------------------------------
    Ashley Ernst
    CA
    ------------------------------
    -------------------------------------------
    Original Message:
    Sent: 12-29-2019 17:22
    From: Callum Davey
    Subject: Re: Too many emails from Review Centre-need daily digest of comments

    The issues mentioned here are also problems for us.  Is there any plan to introduce more controls for review centre email notifications ?

    ------------------------------
    Callum Davey
    ------------------------------

    Original Message:
    Sent: 06-08-2016 18:39
    From: Kristina King
    Subject: Re: Too many emails from Review Centre-need daily digest of comments

    Thanks for sharing your workaround, Ekaterina. I think it's the best option for now. Scott and Tom, I totally agree with you.
    Ashley Ernst
    [Pronouns]
    Product Manager
    Jama Software