The purpose of this page is allow Mlab to communicate with members of the community either with mass messaging for marketing and promotion or individually to answer support issues and other one to one communication.

Requirements

The From Mlab inbox defaults to displaying received messages. There is no sent items outbox however there is a send us feeddback link which initiates a message send process. These messages will never expire or be removed from the user's inbox unless initiated by the user. However we should make this configurable because at some point we may want to automagically remove messages after 30 days to help keep the user's box clean and the DB clean. See the main message center page for more general guidelines on formatting messages. This page is specifically outlining the requirements for Mlab messages from staffers.

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Navigation
There is a set of controls that will be available to the user to help them manage their message inflow and outflow.

1. Send us Feedback - selecting the button/link initiates the compose message process

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Supporting Controls
There is a set of controls that will be available to the user to help them manage their message inflow and outflow.

1. Select - Actions only apply to items displayed on the page currently. Select actions may be stacked upon one another so it is feasable that the user could select the unread and read link for instance to check those items on
   1. All - adds a checkmark to all messages. The checkbox is located in the first column of every row. This checkbox is unchecked by default.
   2. None - Any checked rows will become unchecked
   3. Unread - any unread messages will become checked
   4. Read - Any read items will become checked
2. Checked Actions - once a line item is checked on an action may be applied to it
   1. Delete - removes all checked items. doing this refreshes the page and line items from the next set of 20 messages will be used to fill in the gaps. So the remaining items on the display page collapse and the next set of messages fill in after the collapse to make 20 max on a page.
   2. Mark as Read - all checked items lose their boldness (unread status) - if the checked item is already in read status the staus remains unchanged
   3. Mark as Unread - all checked items get an unread status attached to it (see unread messages below for staus change requirements)
   4. There is no blocking or flagging
3. Sorting - there is no sorting - newness is always first

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Message Display

General
1. If the inbox is empty a message should disply where the line items normally would be that says something like, "You have no messages at this time." However this should not be the case upon first registration because there will be a message from a staffer welcoming the person who has just signed up. But this new user may decide to delete this message doing this will prompt the aforementioned message if in fact the welcome message was the only message in the box.
2. Messages are displayed with the newest first - so by column date
3. There are 20 messages displayed before pagination begins
1. There should be an indicator of what chunck of 20 is being viewed and of how many ie 1-20 of 130
2. There should also be a way to traverse ahead or back with next and previous buttons to go back and forwared a page and also allow user's to skip to any page with a page link indicator button ie < Previous | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Next >
4. Each line item has these components
   1. Checkbox - used for giving the message an action (see above)
   2. Profile Pic of sender
   3. From - displays staffer's name
   4. Message - displays message truncated and dimmed to 2 lines (bolded when new)
   5. Date Received - dates are displayed with date and time stamp of time sent by sender not by time downloaded by recipient
5. There is no need for messages to be threaded in this area since these are not intended to be interacted with, however the threading logic may be used without breaking the usability of the message
6. When a message row is rolled over by the user the whole row highlights with a color (HEX and function TBD but for now use the demoed color and fade)
7. The whole row should be selectable so if the mouse is highlighting a row even though it is not over a text link the onclick should take the user to the actual message.
8. When a user rolls over and holds over a profile pic for .75 seconds there is a balloon pop-up that appears. In the balloon is a snippet of the pic owner's profile information. The balloon includes: a profile pic, profile name, an indicator as to whether or not the member is online, age, gender, location, relationship status, a truncated profile description, a link to the user's profile page, and a link to send a message to that person. The profile pic as well as the membername are linked to the poster's profile page. The send a message link goes to the sender's message center with the poster's info already populated in the "To" box. See the message center for more information.