Discussions not displaying on Dashboard sidebar

[acshields]

Expected behavior

I expect to see the same summary list of discussions shown in the left sidebar of the Dashboard and Project Plan.

Actual behavior

The sidebar in the Project Plan are showing discussions. However, the sidebar in the Dashboard are not showing the same list of discussions.

Aha! Link: https://topcoder.aha.io/features/TCCONNECT-430

[vikasrohit]

That is a technical limitation @acshields. Our left panel Discussions links are expected to scroll to the particular discussion on the dashboard and if we show the discussion about project plan (i.e. discussions specific to the phases) on the dashboard, we won't be able to do that and use would feel stuck there. And if instead open the project plan tab on click of phase discussion from the dashboard, it would make a page change which might not be the user's intent and they might feel confused as they clicked on Dashboard and we took them to project plan page.

If we are okay with page shift for phase discussions from dashboard to project plan, we can implement that. Let us know your thoughts.

[acshields]

I am okay with the page shift from dashboard to project plan. @vikasrohit

[vikasrohit]

Okay.

@RishiRajSahu We can take this in CF.

[maxceem]

This task heavily depends on #2464. After that issue is done we can easily handle this one. I'm marking this as blocked until then.

[vikasrohit]

@maxceem I don't think we are dependent on #2464 for this as the simple hyperlink https://connect.topcoder-dev.com/projects/7248/plan#phase-2097 in LinkMenu component with custom onClick method, which we are already doing on project plan tab, would work as is. All we need to do is the render the phase topics list on the dashboard left panel as well.
Let me know if I am missing something here.

[maxceem]

@vikasrohit if understand correctly this has to work like this in total:
Add links for the phase topics to the dashboard sidebar as requested above. These links should lead to projects/:projectId/plan#feed-${feed.id}. When we click them, the project plan tab has to become active, browser window has to be scrolled to the phase related to the topic and Discussions tab of the phase has to be opened.

So the described behaviour is now implemented by the custom onClick method on the project plan page, and it has to also work from the dashboard page. And the task which is described in #2464 looks like general case for such behavior: "navigate to the conrete topic including topic of the phases". So looks like issue #2464 will also replace custom onClick method on the project plan page.

Let me know if I'm overthinking here.

2. Btw, should we also add links to the Dashabord topics on the Project Plan page sidebar?
   As I understand it was requested in the issue description but later not sure if it was canceled or no:

   I expect to see the same summary list of discussions shown in the left sidebar of the Dashboard and Project Plan.

[vikasrohit]

@maxceem #2464 is to redirect from /discussions/{discussionId} to projects/:projectId/plan#feed-${feed.id} i.e. determine the project and type (identified by tag) of the topic and populate the URL projects/:projectId/plan#feed-${feed.id} so that the original link can load the actual topic.
Now first thing is that /discussions/{discussionId} is probably not used anywhere now in our system. It was used when we had discourse in place because there we only had the topicId and no project info.
Second thing is that it should be enough to get links of phase topics in dashboard's left panel as projects/:projectId/plan#feed-${feed.id} because as you said it redirects user to plan tab and expands the appropriate phase via onClick method. However, I think this link does not work if we load it as new page because the discussions (posts) are not loaded by default on plan tab. So, instead we can use projects/:projectId/plan#phase-${phaseId}-posts which actually loads the plan tab, expands the appropriate phase with discussions tab open. I enabled this URL yesterday in this branch.

[vikasrohit]

Btw, should we also add links to the Dashabord topics on the Project Plan page sidebar?

And yes, we need to show the same list of topics in the left panel of both dashboard and plan tabs.

[vikasrohit]

@maxceem I think we are done with the fix for this issue, right?

[maxceem]

@vikasrohit no, it wasn't included in the recent CF as I didn't have time to clarify it for myself. I'll update on it soon, and will fix myself if it's needed asap.

[vikasrohit]

Okay. It would be great if we don't have anything pending in terms of requirements and you can close it by tomorrow morning.

[maxceem]

@vikasrohit most of things are clean and I'm currently implementing it.

Only two things: so far we don't pre-load feeds for dashboard and always reload them when we come to the dashboard. It causes two undesired behaviours:

1. on the Project Plan tab we don't have feeds loaded, so now we have to change it, and loads all the feeds to show their list on the Project Plan tab
2. we have to stop reload feeds when we come to dashboard page otherwise it would be like this https://monosnap.com/file/OS7hVZj9obyLtTXLbw1w8GFt72zsYN

Does it make sense? I do both of these changes?