XF 2.4 Direct message labels

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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:

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

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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:

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

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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:

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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.
 
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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!
 
mjda said:
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!
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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.
 
Paul B said:
You can download an early Alpha version of 2.4 from your customer account here: XF 2.4 Alpha 1
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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! 🤦‍♂️ 🤣

Chris D said:
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.
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Yeah, I think you're right. I'm just happy that something was done here. It'll certainly save me a lot of time.
 
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.
 
mjda said:
My only complaint is that I want it now!
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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.
 
Xon said:
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.
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I appreciate that, but I no longer use third-party add-ons. The only exception is the Cloudflare add-on by digitalpoint.
 
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Chris D said:
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.
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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 said:
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.
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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.
 
This is a nice and really overdue quality of life feature (that I probably won't ever use, lol) :)

Alpha1 said:
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.
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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.
 
Kirby said:
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.
Click to expand...
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.
 

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