Thunderbird/Support/SupportExtensionPRD

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This is a PRD (a high falutin' word for spec) for the Thunderbird Support Extension for Thunderbird 3.1 and beyond.

The ideal plan would be to experiment with an extension for Thunderbird 3.1 and then make it part of core for 3.2 and continue to enhance it post 3.2

Philosophy: get experiments out quickly;learn by doing rather than just talking, fix / repair the problem rather than getting the user to create a support request.

i.e. bias towards getting an extension out and getting feedback ASAP and then get the extension core asap thereafter ideally 3.2

Feature: about:support

port Firefox feature from bug 548041 and obscure username (possible enhancement: somehow provide full user name via a secure channel e.g. email to a mailing list if the user opts in)

Feature: Cannot send and receive email

Cannot send email

check these steps in order:

  1. try connecting and logging in
  2. check if settings are the same as on ISPDB, if they are, offer to change them
  3. check that firewall is not blocking SMTP traffic
  4. check that the SMTP server is up (perhaps by ispdb polling SMTP status and having a REST API to get the status)
  5. offer to delete password if the above doesn't work (requires user to opt-in and then type in password
  6. Check for and repair: Uncheck "Use username and password"

if the above doesn't help copy the about:support settings to the clipboard and ask the user to paste them into Get Satisfaction

Cannot receive email

check these steps in order:

  1. try connecting and logging in
  2. check if settings are the same as on ISPDB, if they are, offer to change them
  3. check that firewall is not blocking POP or IMAP traffic
  4. check that the POP/IMAP server is up (perhaps by ispdb polling POP/IMAP server status and having a REST API to get the status)
  5. offer to delete password if the above doesn't work (requires user to opt-in and then type in password

If the above doesn't help, copy the about:support settings to the clipboard and ask the user to paste them into Get Satisfaction

Feature: Virus Checker Extension

Somehow detect virus checker that we know doesn't work like Kaspersky

Feature: usable NSPR logging

have a user friendly way for folks to turn on logging and email the logs (which doesn't scale) or ideally creates a support topic with this log, leveraging jcranmer's work with ctypes on trunk

Parking Lot

Above features are priority for top 3 problems: cannot add a new account, and cannot send or receive email

Folllowing are cut and pasted from: https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Bienvenu/support_extension_ideas

  1. Profile discovery/import. We've seen several users who have lost track of where their mail is stored, for one reason or an other. For example, they've changed the server directory, or the server directory has gotten corrupted. Or a user may want to move a profile from one machine to an other, or need to recover from backups. It's fairly straightforward for sophisticated users to move the appropriate files around, but it's daunting for normal users. There's also the bug where profiles.ini or prefs.js gets corrupted (especially on upgrade) so users start up and see the new account wizard. I'd like to see support for finding "lost" profiles and mail folders and offering to import them into an existing profile. (Moz backup and restore helps here, from what I understand...) This would be similar to what things like iTunes and iPhoto do on first run - find files that look like music or photos. We currently can't even import from an existing Thunderbird profile.
  2. Easy way to clear the disk cache, and rebuild indexes/offline stores.
  3. Turn on folder compaction, if not already turned on, and/or compact folders.
  4. Check for virus checkers known to cause issues, especially ones that intercept the communication between Thunderbird and the mail server. Don't know how feasible this is.
  5. Check for non-default settings the user may have accidentally toggled and gotten confused about - e.g., view | messages | unread only, view | threads | unread for inboxes or other folders, view | display attachments inline turned off, view | message body as | something other than original html. Check for collapsed folder pane...
  6. Check for unusual slowness in various operations (opening a message, loading a folder) and try to diagnose (virus checker can slow down file i/o for large files, huge number of messages in imap folders or on pop3 server can slow things down, etc)
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