Provide a way to disable notifications from calendar events

[Pat McGowan]

While I like having the calendar on the phone I do not want an audible notification for the events.
Would we simply add the calendar app to the Notifications page?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Calendar is in the design https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Notification ... it's likely a change for indicator-datetime or the calendar app to provide the required hooks to be listed there

[Pat McGowan (pat-mcgowan)]

I view this as a requirement for preinstalling calendar app in the image

[Kunal Parmar (pkunal-parmar)]

From calendar we can add field to Collection to indicate if Notification is enabled or not. Notification service can read same field and decide to fire notification or not.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

I don't see why this is a Calendar bug. System Settings "Notifications" screen should automatically list Calendar along with every other app that has requested a notification since it was last installed. The Calendar app shouldn't need to do anything special for that. If app developers have to do anything special to show up in the list, sometimes they'll forget.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

@Matthew, we need a way for applications to "declare that they do notifications" though, otherwise how would you tell that calendar needs to be listed but that e.g my sudoku games doesn't?

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Hmmm, you have a good point.

I imagined that the way apps would declare that they do notifications would be the same way that they declare they use your location, or camera, or or contacts, or an Online Account: by actually trying to do it. I thought it wouldn't matter that it's a prompt in all the other cases, but an actual first notification in the notifications case: either way, the system could remember that a particular app had done it, and then show only relevant apps in each list.

But the difference does matter. You may be in a situation where for a certain embarrassing app, you know ahead of time that it would be a Very Bad Idea for it ever to send you notifications. (Or, maybe, it would be okay when the phone is unlocked but never when it's locked.) In that case, you want to turn off notifications *before* the first notification ever arrives. So it's not good enough for an app to show up in the list only after it sends its first notification.

So, how could we solve this?

1. Just list every installed app in the Notifications list. Drawbacks: * The list could get very long. * Confusion from listing apps, in a "Notifications" list, that never send notifications to anyone.

2. Require apps to prompt for permission before sending notifications. Typically this would happen during first run, or when you first use the feature that involves notifications. If you deny an app permission, its notifications don't appear anywhere. The Phone and Messaging apps would, obviously, be permitted by default. Drawback: * An extra prompt per app. (Previously I'd rejected this on the grounds that prompting you to ask if it's okay to prompt you is a bit silly.)

3. Require an app to declare in its manifest that it might send notifications. If it does this, it shows up in the Notifications permissions list, even before you've opened it for the first time. If it doesn't do this, any notifications are ignored. Drawbacks: * Extra bureaucracy for app developers.

4. Some kind of static analysis of apps when they're published, detecting whether they ever use notifications. If an app does, it shows up in the Notifications permissions list, even before you've opened it for the first time. Drawbacks: * Extra work for Ubuntu Store developers. * Would need some other mechanism/policy for testing unpublished apps.

Any other possible solutions?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Your list cover the options I can think about, unsure if others have better ideas

just as a piece of info, GNOME has been added a key to their .desktop for that which is a bit equivalent to your option 3/
https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/GnomeGoals/NotificationSource

[Pat McGowan (pat-mcgowan)]

I think fixing bug #1440111 will also fix this, as a push helper will be provided

[Jenkins Bot (ubuntu-core-apps-jenkins-bot)]

Fix committed into lp:ubuntu-calendar-app at revision 758, scheduled for release in ubuntu-calendar-app, milestone rtm14

[Stuart Langridge (sil)]

A combination of 2 and 3 might be useful -- add a .desktop key which apps can set, and if an app doesn't set this key and then does show its first notification, the user is prompted. So app developers are encouraged to set the key (so avoid their users being prompted for whether showing notifications is allowed), but forgetting still maintains the principle that embarrassing apps will not show a first notification unprompted.

(I expect that some part of the documentation/askubuntu question ought to be a prominent search engine hit for the search "why does my app ask for permission to show notifications" or similar, too.)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package indicator-datetime - 15.10+16.04.20160310-0ubuntu1

---------------
indicator-datetime (15.10+16.04.20160310-0ubuntu1) xenial; urgency=medium

  [ Charles Kerr ]
  * Don't show calendar notifications if the're blacklisted in system
    settings (LP: #1474078)
  * change packaging dependencies and add source #ifdefs to support the
    versions of EDS that ship with vivid and xenial

 -- David Barth <email address hidden> Thu, 10 Mar 2016 16:28:44 +0000