ubuntu-touch-coreapps team mailing list archive

[Nekhelesh Ramananthan <krnekhelesh@xxxxxxxxx>]

 Hangout sketchpad- 10-1-13, 11-30 AM
(1).svg<https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B55Gs35e-jxxWXA2dW1CZWRJa1Z1clV4UVI5dWh1SzhlSzlR/edit?usp=drive_web>
Hey everyone,

This is concerning the current status of the Alarms feature on Ubuntu
Touch. As I understand this feature spans across different teams and hence
requires coordination to get it done. So I have asked Alan Pope to be that
person who has an overview of the big picture and ensure that a team is not
blocked on any factor. And in this email, I would like to outline all the
work that has been done and those which requires some attention. It is
unfortunate that we couldn't get this done by 13.10, but I think we should
perhaps set our goal to the upcoming MWC 2014. This should give us
effectively about 6 weeks to get the Alarms up and running. I believe this
is possible considering that a majority of the work has already been done.

The different pieces of the Alarms implementation are,

   1. EDS Backend - *Complete* (Renato Filho)
   2. Alarms API to interact with the backend - *Complete* (Zsombor Egri)
   3. Alarms Page in the Ubuntu Clock Page to add, edit, list and delete
   alarms - *Complete (v0.1)* (Nekhelesh Ramananthan)
   4. Register alarm:/// schema for url dispatcher - *Complete *(Ted Gould)
   5. A background service which monitors and triggers the snap
   notifications when an alarm is triggered (Charles Kerr)
   6. Snap Notification Design (?)
   7. Wake/Unlock Device when alarm notification appears similar to the
   behaviour exhibited when receiving a call (?)

At the end of the 13.10 cycle, the first 4 items listed above were
completed. I believe the outstanding tasks is essentially the background
service which constantly monitors the EDS backend and triggers an alarm
notification appropriately. I believe this task is not simple as it seems.
I had a discussion with Alan Pope, Thomas Strehl, Charles Kerr, Ted Gould
towards the end of the 13.10 cycle to discuss about the best way to show
the alarm notification in such a way it takes into account others
applications which would also create alarms like the calendar app, and
other 3rd party apps in the future. During the meeting, we arrived at a
possible implementation which is illustrated in the flowchart attached to
this email. It would be best if the platform team in charge of the lower
levels take a look at the implementation idea and approve it. This way
other parties like Charles Kerr can go ahead with their work item. I
believe the last work item concerning the snap notification design be also
reviewed by the concerned design team. I am not aware of who the concerned
parties of the 6th and 7th work item are. Please advice for those work
items.

The work items above are essentially about the 0.1 version of the Alarms
implementation. This doesn't include features like,

   - Snooze Capability (snooze occurences, predefine snooze time etc)
   - Monthly, yearly recurring alarms

I heard that Zsombor is already working on extending the Alarms API.
However for the purpose of this email discussion, I suggest that we focus
first on delivering a basic alarm implementation where the user is able to
set,edit,delete an alarm. When the alarm is triggered it should trigger a
notification where the user is able to dismiss the alarm.

Cheers,

Nekhelesh Ramananthan