Missing Object Notifications are too noisy right now.

[akhenry]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
In the test and production environments for the VIPER mission there are regular changes to the telemetry dictionary. Currently we show a prominent notification to the user for every object that Open MCT has tried to load and that is missing. This can be objects embedded in the display that the user is navigated to, or it can simply be that the user has a part of the tree expanded that contains a missing object.

Constantly displaying a red error notification to users is rendering our error notifications useless. We are basically teaching users to ignore them.

Describe the solution you'd like
There are two options I can think of

1. When an object is missing, show a minimized notification
2. Better yet, let's collect missing object notifications in a completely separate indicator so that notifications become meaningful again.

[360macky]

Hi @akhenry!

Following the first option, I'm thinking of:

Provide a toggle option to mute custom types of notifications: Missing object notifications are received but will not interrupt on the user interface.

Users can mute these types of notifications from the notification list, from the message and/or from the overlay. And/or also from a (new) Notification Settings section within the notifications list.

Then the user can still find these notifications within the notifications list, or in a separate list with a separate indicator (like second option).

What do you think? What could improve?

[akhenry]

Hi @360macky! Thanks for your interest in this issue, and my apologies for the delay in getting back to you. I really like your suggestion and we will keep it in mind for future improvements to our notifications list.

We need a quick fix for an upcoming test, so we are going to just minimize missing object notifications by default for now. We may come back to this and consider a more sophisticated solution such as the one you suggested.

[akhenry]

@khalidadil In addition to the missing object notifications, the Telemetry API is throwing various errors when it tries to retrieve telemetry for missing objects. eg. "Telemetry metadata does not match the active time system."

I think we need to add some logic so that .request .subscribe and .requestCollection are noops for missing objects. Missing objects can be identified by a type of "unknown"

[360macky]

Hi @360macky! Thanks for your interest in this issue, and my apologies for the delay in getting back to you. I really like your suggestion and we will keep it in mind for future improvements to our notifications list.

We need a quick fix for an upcoming test, so we are going to just minimize missing object notifications by default for now. We may come back to this and consider a more sophisticated solution such as the one you suggested.

Hi @akhenry! I understand. Thank you for considering the solution I suggested.

[khalidadil]

Testing Instructions:

1. Download the attached file and change extension to JSON.
2. Import the JSON file into OpenMCT.
3. Navigate to the imported plot.
4. You should see that the missing object error does not display but is shown in the notification panel.

Missing Object Stacked Plot.txt

[akhenry]

Unfortunately not fixed when I test with an existing layout that has missing objects. Ping me for link.

[akhenry]

Suspect that the issue is because a notification about telemetry metadata is triggered before missing object notification so this logic fails. To fix it we probably need to duplicate the same check here.

Also, that telemetry metadata error is misleading, the root cause is also a missing object (it's trying to fetch telemetry metadata for a missing object in the TelemetryCollection), so we should short-circuit that check.

[ozyx]

Verified fixed - Testathon 3-17-23 🍀