1761676 - In Account Settings, Selecting CC or BCC these email addresses automatically populates the address field with the account's email address

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Account Manager, defect)

Description

[Matt]

I have seen this on both the release 91.7 and daily builds.
Name Thunderbird
Version 91.7.0
Build ID 20220305171341

and

Thunderbird
Version 100.0a1
Build ID 20220326095445

Clicking the CC or BCC in account settings to expose the fields in the composer immediately populates the field I am wanting left blank with the email address I am sending from necessitating clearing the defaulted value from the field.

I do wonder if this might be related to a spike in folk seeing mail sent from their account appearing in their inbox. But I have not followed up with any of the support topics, as I feel this is a poor design as it stands. My experience is folk usually only want an address in there to notify another account, not their own.

Was this really an intended action, Alessandro? Feel free to close the bug if it was.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

FWIW I haven't seen this. But I am mostly using beta. Also, I don't see other bug reports of this since 91.7.0 shipped https://mzl.la/3LFjeX3 Casting a wirder net going back 4 weeks, still no matches https://mzl.la/35wqFAg

Comment 2

[Matt]

I have only observed on Windows with release and daily. But this is how it works in daily. I used drive because the MP4 was too large for Bugzilla.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CGQ6GG1vZSA5UoM8uwuNpRwTqwI76dDc/view?usp=sharing

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I didn't correctly read, and so I retract my comment 1.

I actually noticed this yesterday prior to coming on this bug, and I believe the behavior is intentional. And IMO is desirable - most uses of this I have seen in the business world, a way of forcing "save all my sent messages to the inbox. Or, if nothing else to remind the user that they would want to fill something in there if they don't want their own address.

Comment 4

[Matt]

I would agree, Wayne.
Except, we are forcing the setting to do double duty to expose the CC and BCC in compose. In the absence of telemetery, I am of the opinion there are more folk trying to expose BCC by default in compose than there are trying to BCC themselves.

Comment 5

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Attachment: Screenshot 1: TB 91, Account settings, Copies & Folders > When sending messages, automatically CC/BCC these email addresses

Hi Matt, thank you for caring about ux-efficiency and ux-error-prevention in the Account settings!

(In reply to Matt from comment #0)

Clicking the CC or BCC in account settings to expose the fields in the composer immediately populates the field I am wanting left blank with the email address I am sending from necessitating clearing the defaulted value from the field.

I know we all sometimes just want to write along, but truth be told, following the traditional recipe of numbered STR, bulleted actual and bulleted expected results helps a lot to gain more clarity about the scenario, what happens, and what you want to happen.

STR:

1. `≡ > Account Settings > YourAccount > Copies and Folders > When sending messages, automatically CC/BCC these email addreses (I'll use only bcc henceforth for simplicity)
2. You may want to

• auto-bcc yourself for every message
• auto-bcc another person for every message
• just ensure that an empty bcc address row shows up for your compositions from this account (new feature in TB 91), so you'll choose whom to bcc at composition time

Actual result

• When you check the checkbox, auto-bcc field prepopulates with your own email address, which is selected and has focus
  • to auto-bcc yourself: You are done. That was easy! :-)
  • to auto-bcc another person: Just type another email address which will overwrite yours. Super easy too!
  • to show empty bcc row for compositions: Per inline instructions ("Leave the address field blank...", see screenshot): In the account settings' Bcc these email addresses: text input, press Del key on your already selected address to remove it - done! That's a single keystroke, once in years until you change your mind.

Expected result

• I think Matt would want that when you check the checkbox, auto-bcc field (in options) does not pre-populate with anything, but remains empty, to optimize for the third scenario (show empty bcc).

I do wonder if this might be related to a spike in folk seeing mail sent from their account appearing in their inbox. But I have not followed up with any of the support topics

Looking at the current UX

I am failing to see a risk of errors here. The explanation under the options ("Leave the addresses blank...") seems pretty straightforward. You cannot really expect an empty Bcc field in composition when you leave your own address in there (in the options), and removing it is really easy enough, just press Del. Once in years!

as I feel this is a poor design as it stands. My experience is folk usually only want an address in there to notify another account, not their own.

Without telemetry, we can all just guess, but tbh, it really wouldn't matter much in this case, and I honestly don't see anything wrong. It's optimized for one usecase (bcc yourself), but the other two usecases are not infringed or obscured in any way.
The good part is that prepopulating the email also gives you a good idea what to fill in.
If you don't like the prefill, just change it. Once in years!

As for the "double duty" part, I think you're well aware of the hassles of bug 1616514 to get an option for always show Cc/Bcc rows in composition into the product at all, as the usecase which Matt suspects as the most frequent was outright denied and I was at the forefront of arguing in favor of it, so this is the compromise that we went for, and I think it's reasonably discoverable and intuitive with the explanation added in the options UI. Future improvements notwithstanding, but those would probably need their own elaborate RFEs, and design proposals from Alex. Unlikely for 102.

Was this really an intended action, Alessandro? Feel free to close the bug if it was.

If you want Alex to weigh in, you'd have to CC him to the bug at least, or to set a needinfo.
I agree with Wayne's evaluation that this is currently wfm/wontfix.