1898084 - Show a 'try beta' appeal to release 115 users

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: General, task)

Description

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

We want to show an appeal to our release users asking them to test out betas before 128 release. In bug 1829911 the conditions for appeal loading were:

• Seen once per user maximum
• 10% chance of selection
• Even if you are NOT selected, your profile will record this and you will not see it again unless we manually reset it in a future patch.
• Windows users only

We might want to do this on a monthly/continuous basis in the lead up to making monthly releases live. (but also don't want to make it complicated)
We might first want bug 1838184 in place.

We'd need a beta appeal page like https://www.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/102.0/beta-appeal/
(which also had a link to https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-beta)

Comment 1

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

We should be able to do this rather easily with a "What's New Page" that's part of the update information sent by the Update server. Bug 1400016 has some info.

Add this to /comm/mail/config/whats_new_page.yml:

- type: show-url
  # yamllint disable-line rule:line-length
  url: https://www.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/102.0/beta-appeal/   # or whatever URL
  conditions:
      blob-types: [wnp]
      release-types: [esr115]
      products: [thunderbird]
      update-channel: esr
      versions: ["<115.12.0"]

This would be shown to every user after updating to 115.11.1. No other version.

To limit to Windows users, we would use a separate Balrog rule for that platform pointing to the "Thunderbird-115.11.1" release blob and the other platforms would point to "Thunderbird-115.11.1-no-WNP".

The "OverridePostUpdatePage" enterprise policy would apply here for managed environments. (Needs porting to Thunderbird I think)

Comment 2

[Andrei [:sancus]]

(In reply to Rob Lemley [:rjl] from comment #1)

We should be able to do this rather easily with a "What's New Page" that's part of the update information sent by the Update server. Bug 1400016 has some info.

Add this to /comm/mail/config/whats_new_page.yml:

How does the workflow for this look? Is adding that file just a standard patch? And then we uplift it to 115.11.1 ?

Comment 3

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Attachment: Bug 1898084 - Implement a low impact beta appeal. r=#thunderbird-reviewers

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

To more correctly recap comment 0, in 2023 we:

• built 115.11.1 at 10%
• built 115.11.2 at 30% a couple days latter when I asked Ikey to change to 30, because I realized we were entering the slower summer season

At rate 50 we'll need to carefully assess the beta response, as before, to determine whether the rate should be changed.

Not sure how, but this wasn't checked in and missed Friday's build of 115.12.0. So we'll need to respin.

Comment 5

[Andrei [:sancus]]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #4)

Not sure how, but this wasn't checked in and missed Friday's build of 115.12.0. So we'll need to respin.

Yeah, this should only go into 115. Our bad for not setting the correct flags, I think.

Comment 6

[Andrei [:sancus]]

Comment on attachment 9403673 [details]
Bug 1898084 - Implement a low impact beta appeal. r=#thunderbird-reviewers

[Approval Request Comment]

Beta appeal for 115.12.0, low risk etc.

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Comment on attachment 9403673 [details]
Bug 1898084 - Implement a low impact beta appeal. r=#thunderbird-reviewers

[Triage Comment]
Approved for esr115

Comment 8

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

Thunderbird 15.12.0:
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-esr115/rev/daf99ed4f854

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

From matrix

-> the beta appeal doesn't work because the function it uses to open the webpage doesn't exist anymore in 115

Uncaught TypeError: messenger.launchExternalURL is not a function
showBetaAppeal chrome://messenger/content/messenger.js:534
_loadComponentsAtStartup chrome://messenger/content/messenger.js:421

Comment 10

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

I'll take care of it.
So launchExternalURL and openLinkExternally don't exist in ESR 115.
That's why for the donation appeal we directly tab the nsIExternalProtocolService.
My bad, silly mistake.

Comment 11

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

Thunderbird 115.12.2:
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-esr115/rev/39dc96c487fd

Comment 12

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

Thunderbird 115.12.2:
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-esr115/rev/d47d74d41259

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

We were unable to trigger the appeal.
app.beta_appeal.expiry is already expired at the current value 1718902800 = June 20.

Even with an expiry set to a high value I was unable to trigger the page.

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

It's very unfortunate but at this point we might as well just skip this appeal, as it would be roughly a week til we get significant user feedback, by which time we will have already created a candidate build for testing and shipping.

We can publicize the candidate builds as pre-release, as we have in the past.

Comment 15

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #13)

We were unable to trigger the appeal.
app.beta_appeal.expiry is already expired at the current value 1718902800 = June 20.

Urgh, of course we missed the time limit we originally established.

Even with an expiry set to a high value I was unable to trigger the page.

Probably you didn't reset the app.beta_appeal.version.viewed preference as that would have been set on the first launch when the expired date condition ran.

We can publicize the candidate builds as pre-release, as we have in the past.

Yes, I agree, let's skip this appeal and publicize the candidate once we have it.
We won't be needing to deal with these appeal uplifts anymore once we have the in-app scheduled notifications.