Uninstall Suggestion

[Aiwa]

When an application is being uninstalled, all the admin gets is a prompt "Are you sure you want to delete?" While this is sufficient for many applications, there are use cases where Admins won't fully understand the implications of uninstall. Some may uninstall while performing diagnostics thinking their data is still safe. 

The specific example, I'm adding a login handler to my application. When uninstalling, I should technically remove the login handler from the DB, and delete all linked logins. That has the potential to KILL user engagement by effectively stopping all users, that created their account using the handler, from logging in. All those accounts would be forced to use email password reset. 

All that said, the suggestion here is to allow applications to hook into the "Are you sure" warning prompt and add in details, specific to our applications, that may have serious implications for the community. e.g. informed consent. ?

[CodingJungle]

 

3 hours ago, Aiwa said:

there are use cases where Admins won't fully understand the implications of uninstall. Some may uninstall while performing diagnostics thinking their data is still safe.  

sorta the crux of the argument here. there is "disable" they can use instead, which is more or less identical to what you are asking here. it removes the app from showing up or being used, but the data remains intact.  maybe instead of making the uninstall process boggled down with complexity, instead of saying "you sure you want to delete this" it explains it removes all the data and anything associated with it from the DB, and it can also give them an options "uninstall" or "disable" or "cancel".

[Aiwa]

1 hour ago, CodingJungle said:

sorta the crux of the argument here. there is "disable" they can use instead, which is more or less identical to what you are asking here. it removes the app from showing up or being used, but the data remains intact.  maybe instead of making the uninstall process boggled down with complexity, instead of saying "you sure you want to delete this" it explains it removes all the data and anything associated with it from the DB, and it can also give them an options "uninstall" or "disable" or "cancel".

There are still problems with disabling applications.  There are certain types of hooks, creating a custom profile field for example, that when an app is disabled, and the custom field type you created is in the pfields table, can cause issues loading profiles or editing profiles.  The uninstall takes care of reverting that data, but still not 100% foolproof when an app is disabled.  But that may be better left for another topic. 

I like the idea of adding the disable option to the uninstall dialog along with a warning, but I would still like to be able to throw in a custom language string with consequences that come with uninstalling that are app specific.  

[CodingJungle]

26 minutes ago, Aiwa said:

There are still problems with disabling applications.  There are certain types of hooks, creating a custom profile field for example, that when an app is disabled, and the custom field type you created is in the pfields table, can cause issues loading profiles or editing profiles.  The uninstall takes care of reverting that data, but still not 100% foolproof when an app is disabled.  But that may be better left for another topic. 

yeah i can see that being an issue, if disabling doesn't disable everything still (i thought the last remaining hangups to it was the queue/task stuff, guess i was wrong).

[Midnight Modding]

No harm in allowing us to put in a custom string, but if someone uninstalling doesn't think for a second maybe it will get rid of their data.... they sure are being careless. The word uninstall itself should be enough for them to realize. if they try to uninstall a program in Windows, it would be odd for them to think their data would still be there, for instance. (even though technically some programs do leave your data behind...)

[Aiwa]

Your analogy is poor. A metric crapton of Windows programs leave cache data behind like program preferences, recently used files, etc. So if you reinstall all that comes back. Also know as WinRot (TM)

I realize admins may still ignore a wall of text presented to them, but at least we could show them a screenshot where they clicked a button that meant they agreed to the damage they did. Then we can calmly explain that restoring from a backup is their only option when they come asking for us to fix their boo boo.