Option to enable/disable auto away and configure timer

[rockneverdies55]

Rocket.Chat keeps user status as Online only if user is actively using chat window or if chat window is hovered via mouse.

Otherwise, user status falls onto Away...

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[rodrigok]

What is the expected behaviour?

[rockneverdies55]

User status shouldn't be determined based on the interaction with the chat window.

User is online as long as she/he's logged in to rocket.chat and doing something on the computer. No activity with OS at all for a predefined time (can be set by Admins) should make user Away.

[Maysora]

probably should add an option to enable/disable auto away?

[rodrigok]

I don't know if we can detect OS inactivity inside the browser.

The auto away is useful to send mentions via push notification.

[geekgonecrazy]

maybe an option to choose how long before auto away. The only place detecting if they are truely away is in the Rocket.Chat desktop app.

[jclabaugh]

maybe 'Set to Away status in [ ] minutes' defaulting to 10 min.

[geekgonecrazy]

agreed 👍

[jclabaugh]

might check out https://atmospherejs.com/dpid/user-presence for inspiration (advanced settings stuff)? Since the app is browser-based, it is harder than Slack's desktop client to set user presence accurately but there might be a cludge idea somewhere that gets you closer to replicating that by adding a user-defined delay period.

We have had UX issues currently with people going "I'm at my computer, I am just not typing in the app right this sec, why is it setting me to 'away' already?"

[jclabaugh]

I think Slack actually does a non-standard implementation of user presence, contrary to the likes of Skype or any IM client... If the app is open, you are 'online', regardless of any of your activity in the app. If the app is not open or your computer is asleep/off, you are 'offline.' You say you are 'away' by manually setting your status by clicking 'Set yourself away'. So its detecting a binary presence state, kind of.

[geekgonecrazy]

https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/08/27/using-requestidlecallback

Ran across this during my perusing of the interwebs. Looks like it might be of use here.

[gmsecrieru]

ifvisible.js looks interesting, do you folks think it could be of any use? Demo here

[klatys]

+1 on this. This also causes sending mobile notifications eventhough you are active on a computer (but not in RC window) which is quite annoying.

I found Robot.js's getMousePos which could check/detect mouse position change. Detecting keypresses is (for obvious reasons) probably an issue, but if there wasn't any other way. Mouse might at least partially fix this...

I'm not really fluent with electron, but was wondering - if it was somehow working the same way the cordova does then maybe some sort of plugin might do the trick...

[joergludwig]

We switched to Rocket.Chat for communication in our company. Every user runs the desktop app on his computer. It would be very useful if we could see, who is working at his computer and who is not at his desk. In the past we used Pidgin with an XMPP server, which did this well.

Rocket.Chat should switch a user to "away", if he does not move the mouse for 5 minutes, and switch back to "online", as soon as he is active again. If Rocket.Chat could detect, if the screen is locked, this would work as well.

I just posted a $200 bounty on Bountysource for this issue.

[freddy70]

Hi all
I'm in the same situation and I have the same need as joergludwig.
I installed the desktop app on several computers in my company. I would like to have a "green" status when user is working on his computer and "orange" status when user stop moving his mouse or screen locked. Do you know if this feature will be implemented ?
Thanks a lot for your feedback.

[StealthMicro]

+1

[klatys]

Hi, like I suggested earlier, I tried tinkering with robot.js, since it's for a electron apps (or if I get it correctly requires actual app - means it won't work in browser) I used it in Rocket.Chat.Electron and it seems to work:

Now I'm not that fluent in how the client works with rocket.chat instance, I suppose it might send some sort of info regarding user status to server which would process that. Could someone from @RocketChatApp point me in the right direction?

[ghost]

+1 Need this very badly to make chat more useful in business environment.

[armand1m]

Hi, I've started implementing this feature, but I'm in doubt in certain situations:

This feature involves not only the actual online/away user but the whole team that this user belongs, so I'm in doubt if this must be in the "My Account" preferences for each user to configure its own Idle Time Limit, or in another place.

. @rockneverdies55 has said:

No activity with OS at all for a predefined time (can be set by Admins) should make user Away.

For me, it should be configured per User in the "My Account" preferences, and each user should use this responsibly, but what @rockneverdies55 sad also makes sense to me, even more if some companies are running this as the main communication channel and needs this kind of control.

Just want to know most people's opinion about this. By now, I'm creating it as the screenshot shows.

[armand1m]

For now, I'm not willing to change the way Rocket Chat handles User Presence, I'm just creating the option to enable the auto away and change the Idle Time Limit if enabled.

[armand1m]

Hey, I've updated the PR #8029.

Know the tests are all passing, and we have the feature implemented in 4 languages:

• English (default)
  

• Portuguese
  

• Brazilian Portuguese
  

• Dutch (Nederlands)
  

Here is a GIF demonstrating the feature.

[joergludwig]

Thank you for your work. Unfortunately I think, the actual problem is not solved:

rockneverdies55 commented on 8 Sep 2015
User status shouldn't be determined based on the interaction with the chat window.
User is online as long as she/he's logged in to rocket.chat and doing something on the computer. No activity with OS at all for a predefined time (can be set by Admins) should make user Away.

[rodrigok]

@joergludwig Unfortunately there is no way to get the OS activity from inside the browser.

[armand1m]

@joergludwig can you be more clear? you just copy pasted the message from @rockneverdies55 but didn't explained anything at all. If you want me to detect no activity with OS at all, I must say that I'm sorry because this is actually impossible without a chrome extension or something like that. But the PR was merged, the issue was closed and the desired functionality was delivered, I think I deserve the bounty. If you want to know if the user is interacting with the OS, I would recommend you to use another kind of monitoring tool in your company such as Hubstaff.

[armand1m]

@joergludwig I've also asked for some feedback before starting to implement this feature, and no one even took the time to respond to some of my questions before I took the liberty to make the decisions about this feature myself. I think it is really not fair.

[rodrigok]

@armand1m Your solution was a good solution, thanks.

@joergludwig We already have some improvements to get the OS activity when using the Desktop/Electron app, we can improve, please open an issue at https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat.Electron/issues if you have suggestions.

Thank you guys.

[armand1m]

@joergludwig can you accept the claim in bountysource please?

[joergludwig]

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I thought this issue was about detecting OS activity. We only use the desktop and mobile apps. I was not aware that there are different issue trackers for browser and app usage.

I accepted your claim in bountysource anyway to support further development of Rocket Chat.

[armand1m]

thanks @joergludwig 🙂

@engelgabriel can you take a look and accept the bounty? 😄