Wikimedia Product Infrastructure team/Push Notifications Infrastructure

Background
The Wikimedia product teams have a long-standing desire to leverage push notification technology to drive user engagement and retention. Product Infrastructure is working on designing and building a push notifications platform for Wikimedia.

Initial R&D: Q3 FY 2019-2020 (January - March 2020)

 * Initial product use cases and cross-team prioritization [Link to google doc, or move google doc table to wiki?]
 * Technical planning and investigation
 * Technology department consultation
 * TechCom RFC submitted

Phase 1: Native Echo
Initial use cases are mentioned in the TechCom RFC and revolve around forwarding Echo notifications as push notifications for the native apps.

Clients supported:


 * iOS App
 * Android app

Use cases supported:


 * Echo can push existing messages received by a user to the user via native apps for Android and iOS
 * App users can subscribe and unsubscribe to receive Echo notifications
 * App and web users can subscribe and unsubscribe to be pushed specific message types (adding a column to delivery preferences for "Push Notifications"
 * App users can manage their subscriptions via the native apps
 * The system can limit the rate and volume of messages to prevent server overload
 * The platform has a Push Notification service for managing these needs in a shared platform competent
 * Users who can no longer be reached after repeat attempts are removed from the service on a regular cycle
 * Product Infrastructure and SRE can monitor basic service usage via a standard dashboard

April

 * Incorporate RFC feedback
 * Finalize Phase 1 implementation plans
 * Start repository and begin exploratory implementation of the required services

May

 * Initial service development

June-July

 * Clients able to connect to initial development environment (e.g., Wikimedia Cloud Services)
 * Client engineers develop prototypes against initial implementations on staging

August-September

 * Android to port existing polling of Echo (large scale)


 * iOS client to port existing polling of revert messages (limited use)

Sept-Oct

 * Maintenance and bug fix iteration based on needs from late summer roll out
 * iOS adds all echo cases not currently supported

Technology approvals required:

 * SRE machine allocation (for launching on k8s)
 * Performance review
 * Security review
 * DBA review

Phase 2: Open Echo
Phase 2 is focused on extending the push system to allow pushes to browsers via the Web Notifications API

Clients supported:


 * iOS App
 * Android App
 * 1-2 Browsers (eg. Chrome and/or Mozilla)

Use cases supported:


 * As a browser user I can receive my Echo notifications as browser notifications
 * As a browser user I can be prompted to enable notifications in context where that in meaningful (ie. not just because I land on our domain)
 * As a web feature team I can implement subscription prompts in context where that in meaningful (ie. not just because I land on our domain)
 * App and web users can subscribe and unsubscribe to be pushed specific message types (adding a column to delivery preferences for "Push Notifications")
 * As an Echo developer I can add a new notification type and have it also be delivered via push

Components
There is currently no estimated timeline for Phase 2 and beyond. Please check for future iterations on this page once those plans become firmer. However, we do know the basic components that require development for this phase, and a rough order of operations for their implementation.


 * Initial case defined by a web feature team (eg. Editing or Growth)
 * Define initial client browser target and extend push service to push to the selected platform(s)
 * Web service worker implementation
 * Implement/update sign-up and subscription UIs for web

Phase 3: Other Than Echo
The final envisioned stage of development is the creation of new types of notifications by client teams to serve specialized use cases. Example use cases include:


 * Re-engagement and encouragement of new or "lapsed" editors ("We haven't seen you in a while")
 * New feature and software update announcements
 * Campaigns and fundraising announcements ("Add a reference today to be part of #1Lib1Ref!")
 * Updates and recommendations for topics or portals of interest to a reader
 * Other News or Current events related content suggestions
 * Notifications for anonymous users

The order and time-frame for these will depend on the needs of the teams and their target users.

Architecture and design decisions
See the Design decisions page.

Source

 * Push Service (Node.js): in Gerrit

Links

 * TechCom RFC
 * Dependencies Questionnaire