[System Settings] After adding an online account, users should always be able to see account options

[Olga Kemmet]

Ubuntu 14.10 r269

Adding an account from an app through System Settings seems to work fine. However, t seems that users are always redirected straight back to the app they came from without being able to review any account options, e.g. sync options.

If you sync for the first time from the address book for example, you won't have the chance to enable any additional syncing options.

-----------------UX comment-----------------

After adding an online account, users should always be able to see account options and then return to the originating app.

[Alberto Mardegan (mardy)]

This is slightly related to bug 1322512.

Anyway, Olga, what Sync options are there on the accounts? I don't think we have any, currently.

[Olga Kemmet (olga-kemmet)]

You are right, it is related to this bug. As Bill commented in #1
"Whenever online accounts are created through system-settings, the default behavior now has all options disabled. For Facebook account, this means that nothing has access to the Facebook account. For Google, this means that contact and calendar syncing is off. The user has no way of knowing these options exist.

I completely agree, when creating an account from the system-settings the account permission page should be opened automatically so the user can see the options. When created directly from an app, this isn't necessary because the app is enabling the desired permissions."

Even if we haven't any currently, we probably will have more in future. For example sync mail, calendar, contacts.... As a user I need to be made aware that those options exist.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Sorry, I have to mark this as Incomplete, because there's no steps to reproduce and I can't guess them. :-)

If you were "adding an account from an app through System Settings" because you were sent there by an "app [you] came from", that is a bug in the app, like bug 1372860. An app should not send you to Online Accounts in System Settings (except as a last resort if you have already denied the app access to an account, but you've indicated that you've changed your mind).

But since you say "users are always redirected straight back to the app they came from", maybe that's not what is happening. System Settings doesn't send you to any app, as far as I know. Instead, maybe the app is invoking the standard Online Accounts prompt. You aren't in System Settings, it's just that the authorization Web view looks like a System Settings screen because that is the odd way in which Ubuntu Touch shows full-screen dialogs.

I'm also unclear what account options you're referring to. The only options I see at the moment are the choice of which apps have access to a particular account. But presenting those options would be inappropriate when you're authorizing an account for a particular app. For example, imagine that an OEM preinstalled Words With Friends. When the Facebook app prompted you for a Facebook account, your journey to Facebook shouldn't be interrupted by the question of whether you want to also use your Facebook account with Words With Friends. You might never use that game, and not even know what it is, let alone whether it really needs a Facebook account. But that's okay, because if/when you actually get around to using it, Words With Friends would be perfectly capable of prompting for access to the Facebook account itself. The System Settings panel exists mainly for you to revoke access if you need to, not for you to give access in the first place.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for ubuntu-system-settings-online-accounts (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Expiring because I still can't tell what the steps to reproduce would be. Please reopen if you can provide them.