A MOTD feature

[alanbchristie]

We upgrade some customer sites, which often result in some down-time. It has been suggested that it would be nice to have a "Message of the day" feature so that when people visit the UI they can be given a pop-up (?) announcing some message (ideally using formatting like Markdown) - may configured by either a file (using a ConfigMap to map it into the container) or text in an ENV variable (preferred as it's quick).

Alternatively ... should this be a feature provided by the AS and DM? i.e. should they offer a "/motd" (GET) endpoint? SO we could have MOTD from the UI, DM and AS?

[alanbchristie]

Idea is to introduce a k8s ConfigMap that maps a YAML structure into the UI pod (directory and filename to be defined).

The map will be a list of messages that are dealt with in order, not processing subsequent messages until the current has expired. Each message will contain a message string (markdown) and two (optional ISO8601-like) dates. Here are some examples (seconds are not used): -

A permanent message: -

motd:
- message: I'm here, like it or not!

A message that should be displayed from 9am on the 20th December, and never removed: -

motd:
- begin: 2025-12-20 09:00
  message: |
    Hello, world!

    I'll be gone soon!

A message that should be displayed until 10pm on the 20th December: -

motd:
- end: 2025-12-20 22:00
  message: Hello, world!

A message that should be displayed all day on the 20th December: -

motd:
- begin: 2025-12-20 22:00
  end: 2025-12-21 00:01
  message: Hello, brief world!

A message that should be displayed until the 20th December and then replaced by another message that is displayed until the 23rd: -

motd:
- end: 2025-12-19 23:59
  message: Beware, something is coming!
- end: 2025-12-22 23:59
  message: Yikes ... it's here!

It's important to stress that although 00:00 is the first minute of the day, to avoid confusion it might be better never to use 00:00 (for the same reason no planes depart airports at 00:00) and to always use 23:59 or 00:01 rather than 00:00.

[OliverDudgeon]

Do we expect markdown to be necessary or could we simplify this to just a title and message text?

[tdudgeon]

V1 could just be text, but an obvious use of something richer is to provide a link to a page with further info.

[OliverDudgeon]

How about for a plain text version (for now) we have

motd:
- end: 2025-12-19 23:59
  title: Beware, something is coming!
  message: More details on what is coming
  url: http://example.com/where-to-get-even-more-details-on-whats-coming

[alanbchristie]

Seems reasonable. I assume title and message should be considered "mandatory"? That's fine if they are. Again the file can be absent or contain an empty list.

[OliverDudgeon]

At a minimum, we need a message. The title is in theory optional.