4.4: AdminCP Notifications

Do you recall that scene in Harry Potter where young Harry is sitting in his Uncle’s living room when hundreds of letters from Hogwarts burst through the fireplace, filling the room?

Sometimes, when you log into the administrator’s control panel, it can feel a bit like that.

As the administration control panel has evolved, there has been more of a need to display notifications, alerts and warnings to the administrators.

There are several things which may require an administrator's attention which may show a notice on the AdminCP dashboard, a banner on the community, or send an email. For example:

• When a new version of Invision Community is released.
• A new member registers and requires administrator validation.
• A configuration issue is detected, for example if dangerous PHP functions are enabled on the server.
• There are items Commerce which require manual action, such as transactions pending manual approval or items to be shipped.

Up until now, each such area would manage how these notifications show and are sent independently. In 4.4 we have introduced a new section of the AdminCP which shows all things which require administrator attention in one place, easily accessible from any AdminCP page.

Clicking on any of these notifications will take you to the relevant area of the AdminCP, or there is also a full-screen Notification Center which allows you to quickly take common actions such as approving members.

While the best approach is to take the appropriate action (which will automatically dismiss the notification) so you always have an empty Notification Center, most notification types can be hidden, either temporarily on a per-notification basis by clicking the cross in the top-right, or administrators can hide all notifications of a certain type from their individual settings. Administrators can also choose which type of notifications to receive an email notification about.

Each notification has a severity indicated by the coloured bar on the side and certain notifications can also show banners either across the AdminCP, or also on the front-end (to administrators).

Notifications group automatically (so for example, if there are 5 members pending approval, you will see 1 notification rather than 5 separate ones) and where appropriate each administrator can choose if they want to receive a single email, or a separate email with each occurrence.

Now you won't miss an invitation to Hogwarts, or anything important again.

This is a blog about our upcoming Invision Community 4.4 release, due later this year.