[MM-24335] Show recently viewed channels when channel switcher opens

[AshishDhama]

Summary

Show recently viewed channels when channel switcher opens
Fixes mattermost/mattermost#14633

Ticket Link

https://mattermost.atlassian.net/browse/MM-24335

Related Pull Requests

• None

Screenshots

Release Note

New features and improvements, including behavioural changes, UI changes and CLI changes

- Before anything is typed, show a list of channels you are a member of sorted by Recency (last viewed at time).
- Cap the number of channels shown here in the default state to maximum of 20

- If there is no recent channel activity (in the case of new users), show an alphabetical list of channels showing ‘My Channels’ first and other ‘Public Channels’ next - still maxing out at 20 for the default state

[mm-cloud-bot]

@AshishDhama: Adding the "do-not-merge/release-note-label-needed" label because no release-note block was detected, please follow our release note process to remove it.

I understand the commands that are listed here

[mattermod]

Hello @AshishDhama,

Thanks for your pull request! A Core Committer will review your pull request soon. For code contributions, you can learn more about the review process here.

[AshishDhama]

@hmhealey
Issue: getPublicChannels doesn't return all the public channels, is there any alternative for that.

[AshishDhama]

@hmhealey Have added server fetch if you are part of just one channel, For more than one channel case last viewed at logic take over. Could not find any case where my channels will work if you are aware of any such flow let me know I will implement that.

[Willyfrog]

minor nit, but looking good

[AshishDhama]

@hmhealey Please take a look now and let me know if there is something that needs to be changed.

[hmhealey]

@AshishDhama I talked with Eric about the current behaviour, and while it's not perfect, we decided it was good enough to ship. While it's a bit weird that the Recent Channels aren't correct after refreshing, they're still close enough that this should be fine. Most users won't be paying close attention to the orders of those channels anyway, so they likely won't notice any differences.

---

@jgilliam17 Be aware that the order of the channels in the channel switcher after refreshing won't be the exact order the channels were read in. They'll be in order of the latest post when you viewed the channel, but we've decided that's fine as in the first half of this comment. Any channels you view during the session will stay in the correct order until you refresh.

The only place this will cause real weirdness is if you view channels without any posts in them (notably new DMs). Since they have no posts and we're setting the "last viewed" to the time of the last post (which doesn't exist), they'll always start at the bottom of the channel switcher when you refresh. That's not very likely to happen in practice though, so it's something else we're accepting for now.

[jgilliam17]

/update-branch

[jgilliam17]

Thanks @AshishDhama
I am not seeing any recent DMs on the channel switcher open, even though I received a message, read it and replied in some.
Based on previous comment I should see DMS with activity, but only Channels are shown. Since there are more than 20 channels already on the list, do DMs/GMs remain hidden on the bottom despite having had activity? Thanks

[AshishDhama]

@jgilliam17 thanks for your detailed analysis have found one issue which was causing it I think now it will work properly. @hmhealey getChannelsInCurrentTeam isn't returning Dms/Gms so have changed it to getAllRecentChannels, the Second issue was Dms keys which had info related to last_viewded_at was getting overridden so have fixed that as well.
I think after this fix Dms will get sorted correctly even if they don't have any post in them, as we are saving the last opened timestamp in preferences and we have put the logic for that as suggested by you.

[jgilliam17]

Thanks @AshishDhama
Recently viewed DMs a GMs are now listed on the channel switcher.
@hmhealey do you mind doing a quick review of the recent changes? Thanks

[hmhealey]

Yeah, this sounds good to me. I forgot DMs/GMs would have to be included as well since they're not in any team. getAllRecentChannels does some extra sorting that isn't necessary here, but that shouldn't have any noticeable effect on the performance of this anyway.

[jgilliam17]

Thanks @AshishDhama
Tested, looks good to merge.

• Verified, on open, Channel Switcher displays a list of up to 20 channels, DMs and/or GMs user belongs to, sorted by recently viewed.

[mm-cloud-bot]

Test server destroyed

[ceesvanegmond]

@jgilliam17 So updated to this version of MM, but the ordering is maybe weird? Previously DMs were higher in the list. Now they are not anymore so you cannot switch easily to the DM. I feel this great feature is los now becauste the ordering is different. I would suggest ordering DMS (eg unreads) first, and then the ordering how it is right now.