642653 - Figure out UX flow for failures and partial failures

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Mozilla Labs :: F1, defect, P1)

Description

[James Burke]

With the async server, errors and partial failures may happen a few seconds later than the actual send. Set guidelines for UX expectations and user flow.

Example of partial failure: some mail recipients rejected.

Comment 1

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

The server API gives us most of the errors that can be returned.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Services/F1/Server/API

UX needs to build out the way we would like to handle the various error cases

Comment 2

[James Burke]

Fleshing out one of the use cases that can occur:

The server can send back a Retry-After error response, indicating that the server is having trouble at the moment. It could also mean twitter is temporarily down.

If the retry window is large, say one minute or more, how should that be communicated with the user? Should the user be asked if they want to send it in the background, or cancel, or just send in background automatically within certain thresholds?

What if the server keeps responding with Retry-After: how many attempts/time window should be used before reporting an error and to ask the user to try again later?

Comment 3

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

For server failures I think it's best to just fail completely right now until we get a retry UX worked out.

A retry UX needs to inform the user that there was an error and when we're going to retry, along with the ability to cancel or retry again right now.  I actually blogged about this awhile ago in reference to Thunderbird but it's still relevant here.  referencing my own blog posts ftw!

http://clarkbw.net/blog/2008/05/13/a-bit-of-a-communication-problem/

Comment 4

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

just an other note, there would be two (currently) UX issues with retry, one would be retry after the user clicks on share.  The other is a retry issue when the user tries to refresh contacts in the autocomplete list.

Comment 5

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

We still need to figure out our failure handling in the client side version.

Comment 6

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

f1 is no longer an active project.  delete these messages by searching for: [closing_f1_project_bugs]