Page Comparison

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Features / Considerations

Is it truly a requirement not to reveal users' email addresses to each other?

Authorization:  Who can send a message to whom?  Is it OK to allow any user to contact any other user, or should there be some kind of acceptance first (as in Facebook)?

Do users want a web-browser based email experience, or should messaging be relegated to users' mail clients?

Event notification:  Is this just for messages initiated by users, or should it support notification of events in Synapse (e.g. entity deletion, entity sharing...)

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• myregence.com simply provides
  • in box
  • out box ("sent messages")
  • display a message
  • compose / send a message
  • reply
  • delete
• discovercard.com is similar to myregence:  in box, display, sent messages, compose, NO delete (messages deleted after 30 days)

A possible design

include:

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• add message object to synapse having subject, message, to, from, where 'to' is a list.  Body is text, but might contain HTML or other formatting, but no attachments; services for create, read, delete, and various queries (get all messages I've created, get all messages sent to me, optionally filtered by status – see next line)
• add message status/annotation for <message,recipient>, esp. "READ", i.e. a user can mark that a message (possibly sent to them as well as others) has been read.  Could also implement "DELETE" in this way (i.e the message is 'deleted' for a user though it is archived n the system).
• delete old messages (e.g. older than a month)
• authorization:  any single user can send a message to any other single user, but to send to a Team requires SEND_MESSAGE permission on the Team, typically granted only to Team members.
• users controls whether message is sent by email or whether they go to their 'in box' to see messages (3rd option would be to be notified by email to go to Synapse in-box).  (Note, this choice might go in a 'message setting' object for the user, later extended for other settings, e.g. a 'blocked sender' list).

defer: 

• quotas on messages and in-box size
• notification of system events (e.g. deleting an entity) / "following" entities and users
• blocking senders
• distribution to groups other than individuals and teams
• message attachments
• "boxes" other than in-box and sent-messages (which are implicitly defined by 'from' and 'to' in the message itself)