316978 - Add an option to sync the identity settings of the account with its sub identities - Incoming & Outgoing

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Account Manager, enhancement)

Description

[Marcus Willams]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5
Build Identifier: version 1.5 (20051025)

If I have multiple identities in my account, each inherit the copies and folders settings of that account. All well and good.

However, if I change the account settings, my default identity gets its copies and folders settings updated but the extra identities do not. This doesnt seem right (in fact I've reported bugs about replies not going to the correct folders on multiple identities because of it demonstrating this is confusing). 

Surely if the account settings are changed it should either change all identities on that account or at least should offer to. Hiding the copies and folders settings in the multiple identities dialogs means if you dont know you can change that you get this odd behaviour where you _think_ your reply is saved correctly but in reality its gone to a previous account setting folder.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Add multiple identities
2. Change account copies and folders settings


Actual Results:  
Default identity's copy and folders settings are changed, but multiple identities are not

Expected Results:  
All identities changed (but this is only because I had no idea you could change these settings on an identity basis - is this new in tb1.5?)

What it could do is one of:

1. Change all identities
2. Change no identities
3. Offer to change all
4. Warn only default has changed
5. Say default has changed and offer to change rest

Preferably 5 I suppose.

Comment 1

[Marcus Willams]

This also affects TB 1.5 rc2 (build 20051201)

Comment 2

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

This isn't just for Copies&Folders, it's any of the identity-specific settings.  The problem is, for any of these settings, one user will want changes propogated to all identities and another will want the changes only for specific subset of the identity.

The UI of the Account Manager is problematic because it presents the default identity's parameters as if they're settings of the account.  I've suggested before that all identities should be handled as top-level peers of accounts: accounts receive mail, identities send mail.  Of course, identities need to tie into the account folder structure, and each account needs a default identity.

That wouldn't help with the problem of propogation, but it would at least reduce the expectation of propogation.

Comment 3

[Felix Pahl]

This is still a problem in 3.0.4. I almost switched back to 2.x because I thought that sent mails were randomly not being copied to the Sent Mail folder. Then I realized that this was because the copy settings had only been changed on one of the identities. Like Marcus wrote, I didn't know that these could be changed per identity, and there's no indication when you change them in the account settings that that won't apply to all identities -- it certainly looks like it will; it's rather counterintuitive to have settings that in fact apply only to one identity shown as settings for the account as a whole.

Comment 4

[Felix Pahl]

This is still a problem in 3.1.7. It's a very serious problem -- I had set up OpenPGP to encrypt all mail to a certain recipient from all accounts, and then found it wasn't getting encrypted if I sent it with an alternate identity from one of those accounts. Again, there was nothing in the UI that was presented to me that would have suggested that there were further settings that I wasn't changing -- these settings are only visible when you click on the "further identities" button in a different tab, which you never see while you're choosing OpenPGP settings. (The same for all other types account settings except for the ones on the main tab for the account.)

Mails not being encrypted when you're relying on them being encrypted is about as serious a problem as it gets.

Comment 5

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

For the record we don't support PGP out of the box - so your issues was related to the enigmail extension.

Comment 6

[Bachsau]

This may be confusing but I wouldn't want Thunderbird to overwrite my different folder settings for different identies. At least it is easy to fix if you use the same settings for all identities. Just delete and recreate them after changing the settings.

Comment 8

[Ulf Zibis]

I can confirm this bug, but I don't have the privileges to set state to NEW. Can somebody do this?

*Attention* : There also should be a solution for the opposite case, if another identity is added after account's folder configuration has changed from default values!

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

arguably a bug - or something that could be sorted out in another bug.

Comment 10

[Ulf Zibis]

Suggestion:
Introduce a default setting for each account/server and in identity settings add option "account/server default", like we already have for e.g. request of read receipt.

Comment 11

[Nicolas Mandil (:NicolasWeb)]

(In reply to Mike Cowperthwaite from comment #2)

This isn't just for Copies&Folders, it's any of the identity-specific
settings. The problem is, for any of these settings, one user will want
changes propogated to all identities and another will want the changes only
for specific subset of the identity.

The UI of the Account Manager is problematic because it presents the default
identity's parameters as if they're settings of the account.

I still do have the same problem today, with Daily & TB 108b2.
Is it possible to go forward (more globally, with a refactoring?) with identities preferences and behavior in TB ?
Might be good to ask UI/UX for a solution.
How can I help (I'm not a developer, sorry)

Comment 12

[Nicolas Mandil (:NicolasWeb)]

See Also bug 1578001
(can't add it to the Reference section ^^)

Comment 15

[Nicolas Mandil (:NicolasWeb)]

(In reply to Mike Cowperthwaite from comment #2)

The UI of the Account Manager is problematic because it presents the default
identity's parameters as if they're settings of the account. I've suggested
before that all identities should be handled as top-level peers of accounts:
accounts receive mail, identities send mail. Of course, identities need to
tie into the account folder structure, and each account needs a default
identity.

That wouldn't help with the problem of propogation, but it would at least
reduce the expectation of propogation.