Jot/bot: better news delivery

Wednesday, February 3, 2021

Every hour, news will now arrive into channels all at once rather than as individual news items spaced fractions of a second apart. This eliminates the endless staccato of notification clicks on the hour (Slack will still click, but once per channel rather than for every arriving news item).

System will attempt to put as many news items into 1 message as possible, so that the amount of notifications the user receives when news arrive is dramatically minimised:

  • Items without interactive buttons will be grouped and arrive as 1 message
  • Items with interactive buttons (e.g. AFP news in Jotbot Open Demo) will still arrive as  individual messages
  • Where at the same there are items with and without buttons (e.g.  press releases and AFP news in Jotbot Open Demo arriving into a channel at the same time), news without buttons will be grouped into 1 message and then followed by news with buttons as individual messages. This additionally gives items with buttons more prominence.

The net effect should be a drastic/considerable reduction in notification pings.