[$250] Web - Public Room - The conversation does not load in real-time

[lanitochka17]

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Version Number: 9.0.66-8
Reproducible in staging?: Y
Reproducible in production?: Y
If this was caught on HybridApp, is this reproducible on New Expensify Standalone?: Y
If this was caught during regression testing, add the test name, ID and link from TestRail: https://expensify.testrail.io/index.php?/tests/view/5174789&group_by=cases:section_id&group_order=asc&group_id=229066
Email or phone of affected tester (no customers): [email protected], [email protected]
Issue reported by: Applause - Internal Team

Action Performed:

Setup - Secondary device

1. iPhone 12 iOS 18.1 - Login and navigate to this link https://staging.new.expensify.com/r/2091104345528462
   Steps:
2. Log out of New Expensify
3. Navigate to this link as anon user- https://staging.new.expensify.com/r/2091104345528462
4. Keep a view of the conversation in the main testing device
5. As the secondary user - Send some messages in the public room
6. Verify the messages are displayed in real-time as the anon user
7. As the secondary user - Send an attachment
8. Verify the attachment is displayed in real-time as the anon user
9. Click on the attachment as the anon user
10. Verify the anon user can view the attachment
11. As the secondary user - Delete a message
12. Verify the message is deleted in real-time for the anon user
13. As the secondary user - Edit a message
14. Verify the message is edited in real-time for the anon user
15. As the secondary user - React to a message
16. Verify the message displays the reaction in real-time for the anon user
17. Navigate to a thread
18. Verify the anon user can view the thread

Expected Result:

Anon users should be able to see real-time actions like, send, edit, react, and delete messages made in the public room.
Anon users should be able to view attachments and threads.

Actual Result:

The real-time conversation in the public room does not update immediately when a user sends a message, an attachment, deletes, or reacts to a message. The user must refresh the page to view the latest changes.

Workaround:

Unknown

Platforms:

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

• Android: Standalone
• Android: HybridApp
• Android: mWeb Chrome
• iOS: Standalone
• iOS: HybridApp
• iOS: mWeb Safari
• MacOS: Chrome / Safari
• MacOS: Desktop

Screenshots/Videos

Add any screenshot/video evidence

Bug6654226_1730721726212.RealtimeiOS18.1.mp4

Bug6654226_1730721726235.RealtimePublic.mp4

View all open jobs on GitHub

Upwork Automation - Do Not Edit

• Upwork Job URL: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~021864696834836429253
• Upwork Job ID: 1864696834836429253
• Last Price Increase: 2025-01-02

Issue Owner

Current Issue Owner: @aldo-expensify

[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to @puneetlath (Bug), see https://stackoverflow.com/c/expensify/questions/14418 for more details. Please add this bug to a GH project, as outlined in the SO.

[melvin-bot]

@puneetlath Huh... This is 4 days overdue. Who can take care of this?

[melvin-bot]

@puneetlath Still overdue 6 days?! Let's take care of this!

[puneetlath]

I was able to confirm the issue. Not sure if it's front-end or back-end. Going to start external and see where that gets us.

[melvin-bot]

Job added to Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~021864696834836429253

[melvin-bot]

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

[angemollou]

Hello @puneetlath @fedirjh,

Solution #1
Whenever another user is typing you can see "X is typing...".
I guess this is the same approach/mechanism which syncs messages too.
So, one can sync messages the same way "X is typing..." Effect Hook does.

Solution #2
What event is triggered when we switch room (inbox)? Triggering this event will display the buffered hidden messages.
That means we don't have to refresh the page to sync messages.
So messages are synced in background by hidden. Text/message component isn't appended to the DOM.
So this isn't a backend issue but a frontend one.

Btw, the issuse also concerned MacOS: Firefox.

[melvin-bot]

📣 @angemollou! 📣
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Please follow these steps:

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Contributor details
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[angemollou]

Contributor details
Your Expensify account email: [email protected]
Upwork Profile Link: https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/~0155562fb4d538d083

Hello @puneetlath @fedirjh,

Solution 1

Whenever another user is typing you can see "X is typing...".
I guess this is the same approach/mechanism which syncs messages too.
So, one can sync messages the same way "X is typing..." Effect Hook does.

Solution 2

What event is triggered when we switch room (inbox)? Triggering this event will display the buffered hidden messages.
That means we don't have to refresh the page to sync messages.
So messages are synced in background by hidden. Text/message component isn't appended to the DOM.
So this isn't a backend issue but a frontend one.

Btw, the issuse also concerned MacOS: Firefox.

[melvin-bot]

✅ Contributor details stored successfully. Thank you for contributing to Expensify!

[melvin-bot]

@puneetlath, @fedirjh Uh oh! This issue is overdue by 2 days. Don't forget to update your issues!

[fedirjh]

Awaiting on proposals

[melvin-bot]

@puneetlath @fedirjh this issue was created 2 weeks ago. Are we close to approving a proposal? If not, what's blocking us from getting this issue assigned? Don't hesitate to create a thread in #expensify-open-source to align faster in real time. Thanks!

[melvin-bot]

📣 It's been a week! Do we have any satisfactory proposals yet? Do we need to adjust the bounty for this issue? 💸

[melvin-bot]

@puneetlath, @fedirjh Uh oh! This issue is overdue by 2 days. Don't forget to update your issues!

[fedirjh]

Awaiting on proposals

[zirgulis]

this is a BE issue. The message events from pusher come to FE ~3mins later. Doesn't matter if user is logged in or anonymous, the behaviour is the same (for the public room mentioned in the ticket).

[aldo-expensify]

I haven't had time to get back to this, I'll try later during the week

[aldo-expensify]

I think this is very related to what I'm investigating here: https://github.com/Expensify/Expensify/issues/473841#issuecomment-2688374701

In summary: Adding a comment AddComment always pushes all participants' notificationPreferences to everyone in the report. If the report has thousands of accounts, this sometimes is just extremely slow to push or sometimes it causes "out of memory" error in the backend and the update is not pushed.

I'll try to:

1. Change the frontend so the notificationPreference defaults to always for rooms like #announce if it is missing (have to investigate what is the right default for a public room)
2. Stop pushing the default values from the backend

To keep the scope small, I'll focus on the #announce room and custom public rooms first, which are usually the biggest.

[aldo-expensify]

PR was merged, waiting for deploy: https://github.com/Expensify/Auth/pull/14403

[aldo-expensify]

Posted a message in the public room 2091104345528462, and after a few minutes it showed up for my other account. I can see that the job took a long time because of the amount of accounts the participants update had to be pushed to:

https://www.expensify.com/_devportal/tools/logSearch/#query=request_id:(%22Ypk2NO%22)+AND+timestamp:[2025-03-22T01:09:09.870Z+TO+2025-03-22T03:09:09.870Z]&index=logs_expensify-033059

[aldo-expensify]

I wonder if we could do something like: excluded anon accounts that have not have any activity in a long time... or just remove them from the room.

[aldo-expensify]

I haven't have time for this, and I don't think I'll have before the end up the week. Next week I'll be OOO for two weeks, so maybe we should reassign if we want to see some progress on this soon.

Offering to pass this on: https://expensify.slack.com/archives/C03TQ48KC/p1743560528177969

[aldo-expensify]

I'm going to un-assign myself from this since I'm going OOO so it is clear that no one is working on it.

[VictoriaExpensify]

Not OD, waiting for an engineer to pick it up

[VictoriaExpensify]

@aldo-expensify I think you're back from leave now so I'm going to re-assign you since this hasn't been picked up

[aldo-expensify]

Yes, I'm back, thank you!