XF 2.4 Direct message labels

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback on our first Have you seen...? thread about the upcoming Add-on update notifications for XF 2.4. It's exciting for us to start this process so soon after the release of XenForo 2.3! And while we are not sticking to a specific schedule for this series of HYS threads, our next one is already here!

This time around we are adding Direct message labels as a way for people to be able to add a little more organisation to their inboxes. This is a long standing suggestion (or two) which, when coupled with direct message search which we added in XF 2.3, makes direct messages much more user friendly and intuitive for members and staff alike.

One of the best parts of this is that the functionality will be very familiar to you if you've ever tagged a thread or added a label to your bookmarks.

Here's what the Inbox looks like in XenForo 2.4:

To add or modify existing labels, you just click the tag/label icon to load the edit labels overlay:

You are able to add up to 10 labels to each direct message, with no limit to the number of different labels you can create.

You can filter the direct message list by a single label, either by clicking one of the existing labels in your list of direct messages, or via the filter bar:

You can also search for messages by multiple labels using direct message advanced search:

To help you better manage your direct messages, you can use the inline tools to add or remove labels from multiple messages at a time:

Prior to the release of XenForo 2.4, we will be exploring ways of exposing a list of all of your direct message labels to make filtering your messages even easier. If you have any feedback or suggestions as to what would work best for you in managing your direct messages labels, please do let us know.

And that's it for this time but all being well, the next entry into this Have you seen...? series for XenForo 2.4 won't be too far away and the subject of that one will likely be your first look at the brand new editor!

Stay tuned for that and thanks as ever for the ongoing support and continued feedback.

 

[BassMan]

Nice addition!

Looking forward to new editor.

 

[donwon]

Thank you @Chris D and the whole XF team! We appreciate you and thank you for continuing to make XF the very best of the best in forum software.

 

[CedricV]

Searching DM’s just got easier. Well done. Looking forward to see more.

What amount of suggestions are you guys looking to implement? No need to spill the beans which ones, but it’s nice to see they’re being looked into.

 

[celebrir]

That sounds nice!

Will there be an option for site-wide tags or temporary(non-saved) tags, so I could create a button which spawns a new message template and include a predefined tag?
e.g.

https://forum.com/conversations/add?to=User&title=Test-Title&message=LoremIpsum&Label=test

 

[mjda]

This is a great addition for me, personally! On my forum I get a LOT of DMs that can't be acted on for sometimes months out. I always find myself having to go back, when the time is right, to search for old DMs, and just hope I get them all.

I've always wanted different folders to put the messages in, but being able to label them all will work just as well, especially with being able to search them. My only complaint is that I want it now! Kinda kidding, but definitely looking forward to this!

 

[Paul B]

My only complaint is that I want it now!

You can download an early Alpha version of 2.4 from your customer account here: XF 2.4 Alpha 1

 

[Chris D]

I've always wanted different folders to put the messages in, but being able to label them all will work just as well, especially with being able to search them. My only complaint is that I want it now! Kinda kidding, but definitely looking forward to this!

Yeah ultimately labels is a better solution. Of course some email clients/services combine both concepts, though ultimately for us I think labels are enough. Labels have the added benefit over folders that you can have messages assigned to multiple labels, whereas usually messages could only be in a single folder.

 

[mjda]

You can download an early Alpha version of 2.4 from your customer account here: XF 2.4 Alpha 1

You know, sometimes you make it hard to like you. I mean, I wanna...but when you post crap like this, it's tough...I just don't know whether to dislike you for posting it or hate myself for actually clicking it!

Yeah ultimately labels is a better solution. Of course some email clients/services combine both concepts, though ultimately for us I think labels are enough. Labels have the added benefit over folders that you can have messages assigned to multiple labels, whereas usually messages could only be in a single folder.

Yeah, I think you're right. I'm just happy that something was done here. It'll certainly save me a lot of time.

 

[Stuart Wright]

These sound so much like tags that I’m wondering why you don’t just apply tags to DMs?
In your post, Chris, you reference tags. If the concept is the same then having a different name - labels - will be unnecessarily confusing. Unless they behave significantly differently to tags. And they appear to be the same.

 

[Chris D]

It's basically the same thing. Labels is more familiar language, however, in the context of messages, for example in the context of emails. Gmail and many others call them labels. We already have precedent for using the terminology of labels with Bookmarks.

As ever, if you disagree with the terminology, it's simple to change with the phrase system.

 

[Chris D]

Just as an aside, I'd actually go as far as to say that while they are conceptually similar, "thread tags" serve a different purpose. Tags are public and used for site-wide discovery of threads. Labels (for bookmarks and direct messages) are for personal categorisation of your content.

 

[Suzanne O]

Love the prefixes and if these tags are similar this will be awesome!

Much better!
Thanks for this

 

[Xon]

My only complaint is that I want it now!

My paid Conversation Essentials add-on implements a variation of this feature. It only supports a single label, but adding multi-label support (including multi-label filtering) wouldn't be terribly hard.

There are also some "conversation folder" add-ons too.

 

[mjda]

My paid Conversation Essentials add-on implements a variation of this feature. It only supports a single label, but adding multi-label support (including multi-label filtering) wouldn't be terribly hard.

There are also some "conversation folder" add-ons too.

I appreciate that, but I no longer use third-party add-ons. The only exception is the Cloudflare add-on by digitalpoint.

 

[Mr Lucky]

[/QUOTE]

Yeah ultimately labels is a better solution. Of course some email clients/services combine both concepts, though ultimately for us I think labels are enough. Labels have the added benefit over folders that you can have messages assigned to multiple labels, whereas usually messages could only be in a single folder.

I think this is great, just wondering why not extend the post bookmark system - or is it the same thing?

My only wish while improving DM management would be DM quotas and ability to export.

Nonetheless well done and thanks!

 

[Chris D]

Bookmarks are different and while they could be good for saving individual messages, labels are applied to the entire conversation, which is more along the lines of folders.

 

[Alpha1]

Prior to the release of XenForo 2.4, we will be exploring ways of exposing a list of all of your direct message labels to make filtering your messages even easier. If you have any feedback or suggestions as to what would work best for you in managing your direct messages labels, please do let us know.

One way to approach this is to allow us to pin a label to a menu. On desktop this could become a list in the sidebar. On mobile it could become a drop down menu at the top of the inbox.
This would emulate conversation folders.

 

[Kirby]

This is a nice and really overdue quality of life feature (that I probably won't ever use, lol)

One way to approach this is to allow us to pin a label to a menu. On desktop this could become a list in the sidebar. On mobile it could become a drop down menu at the top of the inbox.
This would emulate conversation folders.

Adding to that and assuming that most users won't have many labels (if any at all):
Show the X (10-20) most often used labels in Sidenav (including counters) + a link "Show all" (if there are more than X) that points to a page that shows a paginated list of all labels with counters and manage options.

 

[Chris D]

This is a nice and really overdue quality of life feature (that I probably won't ever use, lol)


Adding to that and assuming that most users won't have many labels (if any at all):
Show the X (10-20) most often used labels in Sidenav (including counters) + a link "Show all" (if there are more than X) that points to a page that shows a paginated list of all labels with counters and manage options.

Interestingly this was prototyped by @Jeremy P during development but he wasn’t totally enthusiastic about it so he’s going to come back to it at some point. I think it’s a solid approach too.