CB Activity 3.0 RC1 Released

Figured it's time for another progress update. The new CB Auto Actions release is almost done. Below is a screenshot of the new System Actions page. So far I've 21 system actions all setup, tested, and working. They're all focused on handling activity tracking for various aspects of a CB install.




The above tracks all of the same activity plus more that CB Activity 1.x tracked. The only exception is GJ activity, which I'm working on adding now. Once that's done I'm going to add a few generic usability actions and new CB Auto Actions release will be available. This will return activity tracking back to your site.

The benefit of doing it this way is flexibility. The tracking is all consetrated in CB Auto Actions instead of a dozen different locations in various plugins. This keeps the plugins lightweight and makes it much easier for me to maintain.

The system actions can not be modified directly, but as you'll notice in the screenshot there is a Copy button. So you can copy a system action then modify it however you like. They all can of course be published/unpublished as needed. Installs without CB Activity also have nothing to worry about as the action will simply do nothing if CB Activity isn't installed.

Almost have all the system actions for activity logging done. GroupJive ones taking longer than expected (each one is being tested, extensively). I however had to make many improvements to CB Activity for this to work as expected. What this means is RC3 will be released to allow the logging to work nicely and there will be an RC4 with the features that were supposed to go into RC3. Should have both CB Auto Actions and RC3 releases out early next week.

The activity logging actions in the screenshot are all I've added excluding GroupJive. So if anyone has some non-GroupJive activity logging that could be done generically please let me know and will see how doable it is.

Just a heads up. There's going to be a B/C breaking change with RC4. So you will lose some comments. I'll try to provide a query to help migrate those comments manually, but there won't be migration for them built into CB Activity.

What I've changed is what comments are attached to. Currently comments are attached to the activity entry. Now this is fine for Status posts, but lets say you upload a photo. The below is the result of uploading a photo now.

1. Upload Photo
2. Generate Activity
- Type: gallery
- Sub-Type: photos
- Item: PHOTO_ID
3. Comment on Photo Activity
- Type: activity
- Item: ACTIVITY_ID

Now the problem with the above is my comment is now linked to the activity. At first glance this isn't a big deal, but what happens when photos have commenting? The result is the photo and the activity entry have entirely separate comments. So commenting on the photo doesn't show on the activity comments and commenting on the activity entry doesn't show on the photo. With RC4 I've changed it so when there is an "item" value present in the activity entry it will link the comments to it as well. So the above becomes the below.

1. Upload Photo
2. Generate Activity
- Type: gallery
- Sub-Type: photos
- Item: PHOTO_ID
3. Comment on Photo Activity
- Type: gallery
- Sub-Type: photos
- Item: PHOTO_ID

Now when photo commenting is implemented the photos for its activity entry automatically populate over. None of this affects comments on activity with no item. So comments on status posts and profile updates for example will be fine.

This same usage will apply to Tags as well, but tagging outside of status posts doesn't exist yet so no B/C issues there. Likes will also function this way when implemented.

So you shouldn't lose too many comments, but regardless I'll try to come up with a query to easily and quickly migrate these in 1 go via phpmyadmin.

Update: Ok once RC4 is released the below query (replace the table prefix if you need to) will migrate those old comments. Normally I'd just implement this migration directly in the plugin, but I feel it doesn't make much sense in an RC. If there was a stable between these releases then it'd be built in. This is a 1 time run type thing as well; you won't need to run this again.