Meeting Notes: 2023-05-17

Note
Meeting agenda: #319
Slack discussion: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C2K1C71FE/p1684335622715959

Personal updates

• A pretty quiet week for the project, the key contributors have all been very busy.
• @Sephsekla is working on a post for Make Core around user stories and the problems this should solve, aiming to have that out by the next meeting.
• @erikyo and @johnhooks are working on the MVP and switch to TypeScript, no major change

Review of project goals and priorities

@erikyo and @Sephsekla discussed high level goals and current priorities for the project

Project goals

@Sephsekla:

• Create an extensible notification system with PHP and REST APIs in WordPress
• Improve the admin_notices experience by standardising notices through the new system, making - things more accessible
• Create an easier and more robust way for plugins/core to notify users by email, replacing the traditional use of wp_mail
• Give both users and developers more choice of how notifications are delivered

• Discussed the use case of improving email notifications:
  • This was always a stated goal early on, but we've been more focused on dashboard notifications recently
  • Once the PHP API is in place, it should be straightforward to add this as a connector for notification channels - this will be a good test case for adding additional implementations

Current priorities

• Communication and community engagement, e.g. Make Core post re: user stories
• Complete in-progress MVP work (functional database, PHP API, hooked up to REST endpoints)
• Complete TypeScript rewrite (since the JS codebase is fully typed already, this shouldn't run into issues)
• Plan for upcoming events

Upcoming events discussions: WCEU and WCUS

• It's unclear whether we will have MVP ready for WCEU/WCUS. We'll evaluate at our next meeting.
• WCEU is probably too close to have 0.3.0 ready, but WCUS may be doable.
• @Sephsekla will be running a contributor day table at WCEU (hoping to be able to do the same at WCUS). What are plans for new contributors?
  • @erikyo: Unlikely that we can onboard new contributors onto the project to work on the MVP, can we find more granular work?
  • If we can have PHP API ready, contributors could test building integrations for notification channels (e.g. email, SMS)
  • Lots of opportunities outside code contribution:
  • Design discussion
  • Get feedback on existing prototype
  • Follow up on user stories work: talk to people about their pain points, suggestions
  • Collaborate with Gutenberg Team on Phase 3 work

Any other business

• Joen has raised some excellent design feedback https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C2K1C71FE/p1684309306843009?thread_ts=1681312292.382979&cid=C2K1C71FE
• We have an opportunity to work with the Gutenberg team on Phase 3 plans for the admin, we should make sure to have these conversations
• Some good conversation around JS UI refactoring: As previously noted, there are a lot of custom components we could simplify by using existing components from @wordpress/icons and @wordpress/components.