Rules for Note Propagation by Dependency

[Robinson]

Does there exist a detailed explanation of the logic behind Notes visibility by hierarchy and default notifications?

 

This is what we observe:

Notes appear to be generally revealed upwards in the Hierarchy. 

• If "Notes" panel is viewed on a project all notes will be visible from every subordinate object.  When viewed on a task, only notes input on that task are visible.  Correspondingly, notifications appear to default to those users assigned to an object.  This seems pretty straightforward.

Notes that are entered on a version appear to propagate up through that task; every version associated with that task will share notes in the notes panel.

• Generally in our studio, versions are what receive notes. A version is associated with the parent task to which it is published, however Notes on the Task will not propagate downwards to the versions' note panel.  Notification seems to only generate for users assigned to the task that published the version.  This means that a version with other dependencies will not reveal notes to artists working on those other tasks.

 

My questions are: 

- Are notifications generated for members of a team assigned to a parent shot or sequence when any activity occurs on subordinate objects? 

• Ex. If Comp Team #2 is assigned to shot 001_001, then will every member of comp team #2 receive a notification for any note activity on any subordinate object of 001_001 by default?

- Do task dependencies propagate notes from the dependent versions to other tasks in the pipeline or is there a way to achieve this through the API?

• Ex. 001_001_Final Comp v005 published to task "Compositing" receives notes that effect all the following tasks on the same shot "Tracking->Animation->Lighting->Compositing".  Artists associated with all of those tasks need to see those notes.  Is the only way to manually input them on each affected task?  Notes on the shot level will not generate a notification or be visible on the tasks without navigating upwards.  

- Do asset Dependencies propagate notes from the dependent versions to tasks/assets used in the version?

• Ex.  001_001_Final Comp v007 published to task "Compositing" receives notes that affect the linked asset "Hero_Robot" containing associated tasks Modeling->Texture->Rigging.  Will or can those notes be visible on the linked asset?

- Are there any "baked in" exceptions to the rule that notes propagate upwards in the hierarchy?

[Mattias Lagergren]

Hi and thank you for your questions, I will do my best to answer them:

On 03/01/2018 at 9:44 PM, Robinson said:

- Are notifications generated for members of a team assigned to a parent shot or sequence when any activity occurs on subordinate objects? 

If by "team" you mean a group, I'm afraid that this is not the case. In the future we want to rework how the notifications work, and allow more flexibility.

On 03/01/2018 at 9:44 PM, Robinson said:

- Do task dependencies propagate notes from the dependent versions to other tasks in the pipeline or is there a way to achieve this through the API?

- Do asset Dependencies propagate notes from the dependent versions to tasks/assets used in the version?

No, dependencies does not affect how notes are displayed - but I can understand the use-case behind this.

On 03/01/2018 at 9:44 PM, Robinson said:

- Are there any "baked in" exceptions to the rule that notes propagate upwards in the hierarchy?

Not that I'm aware of, if you find any it would be interesting to know!

[Eric Pinkel]

Our team is having a similar issue.

We want to understand how to get the notes created at the task level to propagate to the group assigned at the folder level.  This is a big issue for us because we have supervisors for each set of tasks that fall under that folder. See attached example.  We do not want to assign the supervisor at the manager level, because we don't want them getting the hundreds of notifications not related to the tasks they are assigned to supervise.  In addition, the artist commenting on the task sometimes forget to add the supervisor to the email and the task is missed by the supervisor. Considering that each artist must include the supervisor for each task seems highly redundant and leaves room for error.

The strange thing is that on some projects the propagation up to the folder level seems to work and the supervisor gets the notifications and on some projects they do not. Maybe it's the way we are setting things up?

[Mattias Lagergren]

Hi Eric, as of now it is possible to control the notifications by assigning managers to the folders / project, or through assigning users to the tasks directly. We're considering changes to notifications in future versions of ftrack and will take this feedback into consideration.

Meanwhile it is possible to listen to changes in ftrack with the API and generate emails or inbox messages. Let me know if you want to get some more information on this.