[US -6] As a user, I want to be prompted to resume my previous session (the documents/tabs I had open) when I reopen ELFA on the same or another device, so I can pick up exactly where I left off.

angie commented

2026-08-21 16:41:25 +02:00

Owner

@jeremiah Instead of prompting, I encourage only having the capability. I use Firefox differently on my laptop vs my phone. I can access the state of the other devices from a particular device, but I rarely want to resume an entire state on a different device.

angie changed title from ~~[US -6]~~ to [US -6] As a user, I want to be prompted to resume my previous session (the documents/tabs I had open) when I reopen ELFA on the same or another device, so I can pick up exactly where I left off.

2026-08-21 18:07:15 +02:00

niko commented

2026-08-22 19:40:34 +02:00

Owner

this feature/user store seems to be out of scope for now. It is nevertheless interesting to discuss it.
I agree that resuming the session across different type of devices, might be counterproductive. If I am editing some video on my desktop, i probably do not want to resume this session on my phone.
Also, we have said that on web devices (browsers) the resuming of sessions is already a featured implement by the browser itself, and we do not want to double that by an internal session resumption mechanism.

Remain 2 other cases: the desktop sessions, and the mobile sessions.

As said above, we probably do not want to resume those sessions across desktop and mobile.

It could still be interesting to resume a web session from within the desktop app, and vice-versa.

In that case, we would still save the session history on the web app, so it can be resumed on desktop. But the web navigation in history would be done with the back button of the browser.

We do have a feature in ELFA GA that relates: following a user's actions. If I am collaborating on a document, and I see several users are currently editing it, I can click on one of them (their profile picture circle at the top of screen) and I will then start to "follow" them anywhere they go. This is a feature competitors have, and that Joep wanted to implement. It is assigned to him. To me, it is really optional and kind of out of scope. But it is in the GA. This feature technically relies on a mechanism that formalizes the session and the navigation history, that can be shared with others. But it would be using the LIVE protocol of NextGraph, meaning, it would not be persisted. The format could still be shared with the persisted session mechanism.

It isn't clear if this "user tracking" feature is meant to cross different apps. What happens if the tracked user moves away from the doc, and goes to another doc, to another app. are we supposed to follow them there too ?

Anyway, to come back to the session resumption feature, it seems like :

desktop and web sessions coudl be saved and resumed
mobile ones not. or maybe they could, but only locally to the device. as it is generally the case on both android and ios, where the current intent or context can be persisted so when the user closes the app and reopens it, we resume where we left off. It is also an important mechanism for mobile apps, as the OS can kick the app out of memory, and the current context would be lost if not implemeting that. but we would not synchronize those sessions across mobile devices.

Adjacent to this US, is the one of the tabs. As discussed with @jeremiah during the first meeting and the second one, and also as identified by the survey, it might be useful to propose an "open tabs" feature to the user. It would be a distinct feature to the drive.

open tabs are already implemented in broswers and we do no intend to reimplement that.
for desktop app, Tauri does not provide it out of th ebox. Shall we strive to implement an "open tabs" feature in the desktop app?
for mobile: I don't think it makes sense at all, as the whole UX is so different anyway. As areminder, on mobile we propose to have:
- an "everything" app that would behave similar to the shell we see in web/desktop apps, meaning, we are "launching the mini-apps and opening the documents, within the shell".
- a set of specialized apps, installed separately from the OS apps store, one by document type or singleton app: messenger, social, translate, drive, docs, calc, tables, etc... when opening a docs file from the drive, we switch apps, with an intent. When opening the docs app directly by tapping on its icon, we first see a list of "recently opened docs", with a button to create a new one.

this feature/user store seems to be out of scope for now. It is nevertheless interesting to discuss it. I agree that resuming the session across different type of devices, might be counterproductive. If I am editing some video on my desktop, i probably do not want to resume this session on my phone. Also, we have said that on web devices (browsers) the resuming of sessions is already a featured implement by the browser itself, and we do not want to double that by an internal session resumption mechanism. Remain 2 other cases: the desktop sessions, and the mobile sessions. As said above, we probably do not want to resume those sessions across desktop and mobile. It could still be interesting to resume a web session from within the desktop app, and vice-versa. In that case, we would still save the session history on the web app, so it can be resumed on desktop. But the web navigation in history would be done with the back button of the browser. We do have a feature in ELFA GA that relates: following a user's actions. If I am collaborating on a document, and I see several users are currently editing it, I can click on one of them (their profile picture circle at the top of screen) and I will then start to "follow" them anywhere they go. This is a feature competitors have, and that Joep wanted to implement. It is assigned to him. To me, it is really optional and kind of out of scope. But it is in the GA. This feature technically relies on a mechanism that formalizes the session and the navigation history, that can be shared with others. But it would be using the LIVE protocol of NextGraph, meaning, it would not be persisted. The format could still be shared with the persisted session mechanism. It isn't clear if this "user tracking" feature is meant to cross different apps. What happens if the tracked user moves away from the doc, and goes to another doc, to another app. are we supposed to follow them there too ? Anyway, to come back to the session resumption feature, it seems like : - desktop and web sessions coudl be saved and resumed - mobile ones not. or maybe they could, but only locally to the device. as it is generally the case on both android and ios, where the current intent or context can be persisted so when the user closes the app and reopens it, we resume where we left off. It is also an important mechanism for mobile apps, as the OS can kick the app out of memory, and the current context would be lost if not implemeting that. but we would not synchronize those sessions across mobile devices. Adjacent to this US, is the one of the tabs. As discussed with @jeremiah during the first meeting and the second one, and also as identified by the survey, it might be useful to propose an "open tabs" feature to the user. It would be a distinct feature to the drive. - open tabs are already implemented in broswers and we do no intend to reimplement that. - for desktop app, Tauri does not provide it out of th ebox. Shall we strive to implement an "open tabs" feature in the desktop app? - for mobile: I don't think it makes sense at all, as the whole UX is so different anyway. As areminder, on mobile we propose to have: - an "everything" app that would behave similar to the shell we see in web/desktop apps, meaning, we are "launching the mini-apps and opening the documents, within the shell". - a set of specialized apps, installed separately from the OS apps store, one by document type or singleton app: messenger, social, translate, drive, docs, calc, tables, etc... when opening a docs file from the drive, we switch apps, with an intent. When opening the docs app directly by tapping on its icon, we first see a list of "recently opened docs", with a button to create a new one.

niko referenced this issue

2026-08-22 19:49:44 +02:00

[US-2] As a user, I want the suite chrome to hide when I enter a document's "deep focus" mode, so I can concentrate on content, with one action to return. #2

niko added this to the Product Design PDR project

2026-10-13 13:44:54 +02:00

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[US -6] As a user, I want to be prompted to resume my previous session (the documents/tabs I had open) when I reopen ELFA on the same or another device, so I can pick up exactly where I left off. #5