Laddawn.com : Narrative thread - early work

Overview

The narrative thread serves both a practical purpose (notifications regarding transactions, customer support, etc.) and a social purpose - drawing the customer in to Laddawn's fun, enjoyable "model service experience." It makes Laddawn.com an inviting and "sticky" destination for customers - it makes them want to return, and to stay on the site, even after completion of the tasks that may have brought them there to begin with.

Notes from preliminary specifications work, May 2012:

Posts can be directed to individuals, billing locations, sales organizations, or Laddawn Sales Rep / Miscellaneous Laddawn Employees.
We will allow 3 different “types” of messages.

System messages (Your order xxxxx just shipped, Your cart is about to expire, etc)
User messages (No PO numbers with spaces should be sent to Laddawn)
Laddawn Employee messages (Pricedrop scheduled for xx/xx/xxxx, New catalog available, click here)

Laddawn sales reps will need the ability to post to multiple locations/sales organizations, or any individual.

This means we need to account user levels (anonymous users, logged in users, Laddawn Employees)

Users will be able to (reply / reply to all) posts.

We may want to disable reply to all when the post the post is from Laddawn, Inc. either employee or system message.

Replies will not be allowed to replies.
Posts will be able to deleted by the original poster.

Only can delete posts that you created.

Email notification when a post that you can read is posted. For example, when someone posts to the XpedX sales organization everyone in Xpedx gets an email telling there is a post on Laddawn.com for them to see.
Clicking on the link in the email will pull up a detail page with that post displayed with all its replies.
Posting rich content will NOT be allowed.

Text formatting (Bold, Underline, Italics)
Images
Videos
Note: The site will detect a link in the regular text and turn it into an appropriate link.
Images and videos will show up as thumbnails, clicking on the thumbnail will show a light box with a larger version of the media.

We will have a mechanism to “expire” content.

We will have the ability to have different rules for the different message types (System, employee, user posts)

The users will be able to choose what posts they wish to see.

Toggle System notices
Toggle Laddawn notices
If they’ve shut off one of these notifications, they do not get an email notification.

Within Laddawn we want different levels of users. Some users will be able to post to “ALL” customers.
On a post by post basis “do not allow reply” will be able to be set.
Allow anonymous moderated posts.

Questions:

Do we make it configurable for the user to shut off the email notification of posts?
Do we allow users to upload their images to us? Concerns about disk space?
Do we want users to be able to post outside of their organization and Laddawn? No we do not.
What do we want for filtering options for the default viewing?

Laddawn.com : Narrative thread - early work

Overview

Notes from preliminary specifications work, May 2012:

Attachments: