[$500] Chat is showing bold in the LHN for the sender

[m-natarajan]

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Version Number: 1.4.42-4
Reproducible in staging?: needs reproduction
Reproducible in production?: needs reproduction
If this was caught during regression testing, add the test name, ID and link from TestRail:
Email or phone of affected tester (no customers):
Logs: https://stackoverflow.com/c/expensify/questions/4856
Expensify/Expensify Issue URL:
Issue reported by: @mallenexpensify
Slack conversation: https://expensify.slack.com/archives/C049HHMV9SM/p1708372588901089

Action Performed:

1. Send a chat to user A
2. Quickly navigated to another chat
3. Observe chat with user A shows as bold and unread, even though you were the one who sent the last message.

If the above doesn't work, vary the speed in which you 'quickly navigate to another chat'? I've been able to reproduce it by very-quickly navigating sometimes, other times I've had to wait a second then navigate to another chat.

Expected Result:

Chat I sent to user A to NOT show as bold

Actual Result:

Chat is bold

Workaround:

unknown

Platforms:

Which of our officially supported platforms is this issue occurring on?

• Android: Native
• Android: mWeb Chrome
• iOS: Native
• iOS: mWeb Safari
• MacOS: Chrome / Safari
• MacOS: Desktop

Screenshots/Videos

Add any screenshot/video evidence

2024-02-20_13-06-17.mp4

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• Upwork Job URL: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~014244c90b04778060
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[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to @isabelastisser (Bug), see https://stackoverflow.com/c/expensify/questions/14418 for more details.

[melvin-bot]

Job added to Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~014244c90b04778060

[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to Contributor-plus team member for initial proposal review - @mananjadhav (External)

[mallenexpensify]

Updated reproducible steps in OP, removed Needs Reproduction, added External label and adding to #vip-vsb.

@mananjadhav please prioritize this. Also, please try to reproduce and post your results.

Internal thread in #vip-vsb about too @isabelastisser

[jeremy-croff]

Proposal

Please re-state the problem that we are trying to solve in this issue.

We should never show the LHN as bold when the sender sends the message.

What is the root cause of that problem?

We do a naive timestamp comparison when we determine if something is unread. This has an underlying assumption that the sender has the current chat open, so the report's last read timestamp will match the last sent timestamp. This logic fails under the reproducible steps of this ticket.

What changes do you think we should make in order to solve the problem?

We can enhance the current isUnread logic to consider the sender of the last message so that it won't mark it as unread if the sender is me.

report.lastActorAccountID !== currentUserAccountID; are variables available in this scope.

What alternative solutions did you explore? (Optional)

[aneequeahmad]

Proposal

Please re-state the problem that we are trying to solve in this issue.

Chat is showing bold in the LHN when the message is send by the user itself.

What is the root cause of that problem?

This line of code below is causing to set the isUnread of optionItem to true (can see the value of optionItem.isUnread set to true in console if we log)

App/src/components/LHNOptionsList/OptionRowLHN.tsx

Line 103 in a792fe8

!!optionItem.isUnread,

it causes to apply style styles.sidebarLinkTextBold here

App/src/components/LHNOptionsList/OptionRowLHN.tsx

Line 62 in a792fe8

const textUnreadStyle = optionItem?.isUnread && optionItem.notificationPreference !== CONST.REPORT.NOTIFICATION_PREFERENCE.MUTE ? [textStyle, styles.sidebarLinkTextBold] : [textStyle];

This change was introduced in commit c4de9b2

What changes do you think we should make in order to solve the problem?

!!optionItem.isUnread should be changed to optionItem.isUnread ?? false or !!optionItem.isUnread ?? undefined so that it isn't set to true by doing !!optionItem.isUnread

What alternative solutions did you explore? (Optional)

N/A

[dukenv0307]

Proposal

Please re-state the problem that we are trying to solve in this issue.

• Chat is showing bold in the LHN for the sender

What is the root cause of that problem?

• When we send the message, the report 's optimistic data is something like:

{
    "lastVisibleActionCreated": "2024-02-21 08:57:25.950",
    "lastReadTime": "2024-02-21 08:57:25.950"
}

• Then, the BE will return the data like:

{
    "lastVisibleActionCreated": "2024-02-21 08:57:26.167",
}

• So, that lead to the logic lastReadTime < lastVisibleActionCreated in here is true.

What changes do you think we should make in order to solve the problem?

• When sending a message via AddComment API, we also need to send the lastVisibleActionCreated to the BE side, rather than creating a new lastVisibleActionCreated as I mentioned in the RCA section

What alternative solutions did you explore? (Optional)

• We can also check if the newest message in sent by the current user or not, if true, early return the isUnread function. This solution is just workaround, in case we do not want to make a BE change

[github-actions]

👋 Friendly reminder that deploy blockers are time-sensitive ⏱ issues! Check out the open `StagingDeployCash` deploy checklist to see the list of PRs included in this release, then work quickly to do one of the following:

1. Identify the pull request that introduced this issue and revert it.
2. Find someone who can quickly fix the issue.
3. Fix the issue yourself.

[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to @Julesssss (Engineering), see https://stackoverflowteams.com/c/expensify/questions/9980/ for more details.

[trjExpensify]

As far as I can tell from testing this isn't reproducible on production, so I'm adding the deploy blocker label.

1. On staging, my own message causes the chat to be permanently unread when I quickly switch to another chat
2. On prod, my own messages causes the name of the chat in the LHN to flash bold then get unbolded.

Thread in expensify-bugs here.

[Julesssss]

I can reproduce it on production, so I'm removing the label. Also, this doesn't seem bad enough to hold the deployment on IMO. Just an annoyance with an easy workaround.

*to reproduce on mobile you have to minimize the app immediately after sending the message, instead of switching chats.

repro-prod.mov

[trjExpensify]

Ah nice, I tried a bunch and couldn't on web prod. Interesting a bunch of people have only started running into it in the last day judging by the multiple reports coming in as well. Anyway, agree if it's on prod it's not a deploy blocker. 👍

(FWIW, I don't agree with the sentiment that this type of bug in the core flow of day-to-day chat use wouldn't warrant being a blocker).

[Julesssss]

Cool. Yeah, I swear I noticed this on Monday/Tuesday.

(FWIW, I don't agree with the sentiment that this type of bug in the core flow of day-to-day chat use wouldn't warrant being a blocker).

In my case switch chat quickly equaled less than 200ms, which is an outlier in my opinion. I had to use two hands in a prepared position to reproduce this. But perhaps the switch chat quickly value depends on account and device 🤷

[Julesssss]

It looks like the real fix will be to return lastReadTime from the backend, so I'm making this one internal.

For internal employees. here's the potential solution

[Julesssss]

Okay, sorry but based on this message looks like I should be sticking with wave 5/6 work. Depending on other tasks I will be happy to pick this back up if we get it attached to a wave.

[trjExpensify]

This issue came up in #top-tier and we've escalated it to a fireroom.

[iwiznia]

Sending PR