Problems I see with Notices:

Overdues are limited to 3 per patron. This needs to be unlimited, so a more robust triggering methodology needs to be put into place, along with tie-ins to fines and privilege restriction
Advance notices are limited to 1 predue and 1 due.
Overdues have two competing syntaxes for item information, <<items.content>> and <item></item>, neither of which are particularly good.

<item/> is only supported in Overdues, not in any of the Advance Notices or Hold notifications
<<items.content>> has to be specified on the commandline, adding sysadmin's to the customization process.

Predue and Due both have separate digest forms, instead of notation that could be flexible enough to handle one or multiple items at a time.
Advance Notices cannot be mandated by the library like Overdues are; what if you want to guarantee your patrons are being sent hold notices?
Overdues cannot be opted into by patrons (I can see no opt-out, but what if you've configured a patron category to not receive overdues, and someone within that category wants to be notified because they're responsible, if a little forgetful?)
Handling of notices to people without email addresses is inconsistent.

For overdues (and possibly advance notices as well) the Koha branch email or admin email are sent the document of all the undeliverable message.
For holds, a completely different HOLD_PRINT notice form is used, as well as a separate script to gather the notices, in HTML, into a directory somewhere on the Koha server.
Overdues and Advance Notices have an HTML option, which works completely differently, but produces the same net effect: notices files on the server
Nothing for checking/checkout notices

Notices are mostly in plain text (except HOLD_PRINT). Should have HTML option, with a WYSIWYG editor.
Message sending is sometimes handled by "process_message_queue", and other times the messages are sent directly
Overdue, Advance and Holds notices are completely incompatible with Hourly Loans at this time
Hold notices are broken out by Branch, Overdues can be too, but Advanced Notices are global. The use of the <<branch>> token has proven quite buggy in my experience
Meaning of "branch" can be unclear in some notice circumstances. Is it the patron's branch? the item's branch? The checkout branch? The currently-logged in branch? Should it follow CircControl? HomeOrHoldingBranch? HomeOrHoldBranchReturn? None? All, in different cases?
SMS is not sufficiently supported; there are character limits that need to be factored in.
Notices do not make use of "reply-to" headers, which would make it much easier for the conversation to continue, without having to fine-tune the mail server settings on the Koha machine to match the addresses of the branch administrators.

So, I'm with Elliott. The system needs an overhaul. The difficult now comes with figuring out how to actually accomplish all this in the real world. I recommend:

more discussions to nail down a complete specification that meets as many libraries' needs as possible
a meeting of the development team (whoever is willing to help) to figure out the core architectural changes required, then allocating work
filing separate bugs for each small component, with Depends On and Blocks links.
Signoffs and QA on bugs 'in order', that is starting with those that form the baseline of dependencies, then building off them once they're in master.
Public test server so that librarians can easily check that the specifications they laid out in the first place are actually met

Who's up for the challenge?

-Ian

On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 2:24 AM, Mason James <mtj@kohaaloha.com> wrote:

On 2011-08-26, at 3:47 PM, Mason James wrote:

>
> On 2011-08-26, at 4:08 AM, Elliott Davis wrote:
>
>> Hey Guys,
>>
>> I have noticed of late that notifications is in quite a state of disarray.
>
> snip
>
>>
>> Essentially what I would like to do is model notifications to do the following:
>>
>> 1. Base notification rules on patron type, item type, and a new grouping I am hoping to write that I am calling the collection code
>> 2. Define a frequency for notifications based on the previously stated groupings
>> 3. Base the start time and end time for notifications on the due date rather than the checkout date
>>
>
> fyi, Koha's notifications not doing feature (x,y,z) does not equal 'in quite a state of disarray'
>
> last time i looked the code was pretty clean and extendable?
>

ooh, my last comment sounded a little condescending there :/ (friday brain)

but hey, my point still stands...
the notifications code could be modded to handle your 3 features without to much trouble, i reckon...

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