Live Updates

Live updates

Your screen keeps up with everybody else's, without pressing refresh. When a colleague changes a ticket or a task, your list, the record you have open and the bell catch up within about 15 seconds.

Asked for in #267, 5.0.0.

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What keeps up

On screen	Catches up when somebody...
Ticket list and folder counts	changes a ticket's status, priority, owner, team or anything else; raises a ticket; replies; adds a note; bins a ticket
The open ticket (reading pane or workspace)	changes it, replies to it or adds a note - a WhatsApp, Teams or other chat message appears in the conversation the same way
Tasks board	adds, moves, renames, finishes or deletes a task
The open task	changes it, comments on it, or adds a subtask
The bell	does something you are told about - within one check, not the next minute

Your own changes in another tab show straight away: a save in one tab tells your other tabs.

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It never throws away what you are doing

A refresh waits while you are in the middle of something:

• writing a reply or a note, or typing in a chat reply box;
• typing in a field, or a save still on its way;
• an open menu, or a card you are dragging on the board;
• filling in a form on a task.

New messages and replies still appear in the conversation while you write, because they never touch what you are typing. Everything else waits behind a small prompt: Updated by someone else just now · Refresh. The list waits for a menu to close, then catches up. Your selection and where you have scrolled to are kept.

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How often

Preferences → Live updates: every 15 seconds (the default), 30 seconds, every minute, or off. It applies from the next page you open.

It only checks while the tab is in front of you. A tab in the background makes no requests at all, and catches up the moment you come back to it or to the window.

With live updates off, the ticket list still refreshes when new mail arrives (once a minute), and a chat ticket's conversation still refreshes every 15 seconds - as before 5.0.0.

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Is it heavy on the server?

No. One request per open page per check, whatever the page shows, and each value it reads is one indexed query that stops at the newest row. A page in a background tab sends nothing. Two indexes were added for it (tickets.updated_datetime, tasks.updated_datetime); System → Database Verify adds them.

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For developers

How it works under the hood - the heartbeat, the signatures, the busy rules, "mine", the cost, the traps and how to add it to another screen: Live updates - Developer Guide (two pages: the design and the server, then the browser side).

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Related

• Live updates - Developer Guide · Tickets · Tasks · Response to #262