[Due for payment 2026-03-25] Workspace - Non-existing room mention shows green highlight after saving description

[mitarachim]

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Version Number: 9.3.38-0
Reproducible in staging?: Yes
Reproducible in production?: No
If this was caught during regression testing, add the test name, ID and link from BrowserStack: #55846
Email or phone of affected tester (no customers): sdijnsoijsodosj@gmail.com
Issue reported by: Applause Internal Team
Bug source: Exploratory - Significant User Experience Deterioration
Device used: Mac 26.2 / Chrome
App Component: Money Requests

Action Performed:

1. Go to staging.new.expensify.com
2. Go to workspace settings > Overview.
3. Click Description.
4. Enter a room mention which does not exist (eg, #abc).
5. Click Save.

Expected Result:

#abc mention will not show green highlight after saving the description because #abc is not an existing room.

Actual Result:

#abc mention shows green highlight briefly after saving the description.
Green highlight indicates the currently opened room, which is not the case as workspace overview is opened.

Workaround:

Unknown

Platforms:

• Android: App
• Android: mWeb Chrome
• iOS: App
• iOS: mWeb Safari
• iOS: mWeb Chrome
• Windows: Chrome
• MacOS: Chrome / Safari

Screenshots/Videos

Bug7104076_1773656732105.5.mp4

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[melvin-bot]

You have been assigned to this deploy blocker because you recently merged this PR: #55846

[melvin-bot]

💬 A slack conversation has been started in #expensify-open-source

[github-actions]

👋 Friendly reminder that deploy blockers are time-sensitive ⏱ issues! Check out the open `StagingDeployCash` deploy checklist to see the list of PRs included in this release, then work quickly to do one of the following:

1. Identify the pull request that introduced this issue and revert it.
2. Find someone who can quickly fix the issue.
3. Fix the issue yourself.

[OSBotify]

🔍 Investigation Summary

Classification: Frontend bug
Causing PR: #55846 - "fix: the mentioned room is not highlighted in policy profile page" by @truph01 (High confidence)
Related Issues: #54941 (original issue that PR #55846 fixed)

Recommendation: REVERT

PR #55846 introduced a regression where non-existing room mentions incorrectly show the green highlight (indicating the currently opened room) when saved in workspace descriptions. This happens because the PR sets currentReportID: undefined in the mention context, and non-existing rooms also have reportID: undefined, causing an unintended match (undefined === undefined).

Labels: Removing DeployBlocker label - this is a frontend/App issue that blocks the App deploy only.

📋 Detailed Analysis

Evidence

PR #55846 was intended to fix issue #54941 where room mentions were not highlighted in workspace descriptions. The PR added policyID context to enable room mention highlighting.

However, it introduced a regression visible in the reproduction steps:

1. When a non-existing room mention (e.g., #abc) is entered in workspace description
2. After saving, the mention briefly shows green highlight
3. Green highlight indicates "currently opened room", which is incorrect since workspace overview is open, not #abc

Verification

The bug is in the interaction between these changes:

File: src/pages/workspace/WorkspaceOverviewPage.tsx (line 197)

const mentionReportContextValue = {policyID: policy?.id, currentReportID: undefined};

File: src/components/HTMLEngineProvider/HTMLRenderers/MentionReportRenderer/index.tsx (line 51)

const isCurrentRoomMention = reportID === currentReportIDValue;

File: src/libs/MentionUtils.ts (lines 27-32)
For non-existing rooms, the loop finds no match, so reportID remains undefined.

Root Cause

The comparison reportID === currentReportIDValue evaluates to undefined === undefined = true when:

• currentReportIDValue is undefined (set explicitly in WorkspaceOverviewPage context)
• reportID is undefined (no matching report found for non-existing room name)

This causes isCurrentRoomMention to be true, which triggers the green highlight styling on line 62:

StyleUtils.getMentionStyle(isCurrentRoomMention)

The fix would need to check that both values are defined before comparing, or use a sentinel value instead of undefined for the context.