feat(invite-email): make OCM invite email optional and improve UI by MahdiBaghbani · Pull Request #14 · sara-nl/nextcloud-contacts

MahdiBaghbani · 2025-11-29T22:34:52Z

OCM Invites: Optional Email and UI Improvements

Email is Now Optional

The backend was already set up to handle NULL emails (thanks, database schema!), but the code was still checking for it. Now you can create invites without email, perfect for when you just want to share a link manually. (in my case test suite)

Invite Labels

Now there's an optional label field so you can tag invites with something like "Giuseppe from CERN" or "Test invite for demo". Makes searching way easier, especially for link-only invites.
I just reused the existing recipient_name column, so no database migrations needed. until the invite accepted by remote the label lives there, after it would be replaced by the actual name returned by remote

UI

Better spacing and layout
Added a checkbox for "Send invite via email", email fields only appear when you check it
Clear hint text about what happens if you skip email

The invite details page :

Just the essential info, no redundant input fields
Three handy copy buttons in a grid: invite link, token, and base64

Everything is backward compatible, existing invites with email work exactly like before. No breaking changes here as far as I've tested, if you test it on the SUNET test drive it would be great!

Gallery

Pop up changes, email toggle, invalid or not configured smtp error, etc

Creating a test invite with no email

MahdiBaghbani · 2025-12-01T09:10:01Z

Hi @redblom and @mickenordin, I've been tinkering with the app a bit, could you take a look at my changes when you have a moment?

mickenordin

I like it!

redblom · 2025-12-01T15:05:28Z

This could be the opportunity to also add the 'Cc invite to sender' option/checkbox when sending an invite.

redblom · 2025-12-01T15:09:33Z

There are now discrepancies in terminology regarding token, invite link, (base64) between the create invite and accept invite form. That must be fixed.

redblom · 2025-12-01T15:29:20Z

Can the 'optional message' field become a multi-line text field again?

MahdiBaghbani · 2025-12-01T15:57:07Z

This could be the opportunity to also add the 'Cc invite to sender' option/checkbox when sending an invite.

I'm not sure what this is, Cc to who? like I, as an invite creator send an email to the recipient of invite and also myself?

There are now discrepancies in terminology regarding token, invite link, (base64) between the create invite and accept invite form. That must be fixed.

Yes, I feel this too, we can discuss about this

plain invite token is the opaque@fqdn
base64 invite token base64(opaque@fqdn) (imo, I don't like it, but this was added to oCIS, OpenCloud)
WAYF link, which is a bit too technical, so Micke mentioned to change it, so I named it invite link.

Can the 'optional message' field become a multi-line text field again?

Yes, I can make it multi line again

redblom · 2025-12-02T10:11:53Z

This could be the opportunity to also add the 'Cc invite to sender' option/checkbox when sending an invite.

I'm not sure what this is, Cc to who? like I, as an invite creator send an email to the recipient of invite and also myself?

Yes, send the invite also to myself (ie. the inviter). So just a checkbox something like this:

Also send copy of the invite to myself

MahdiBaghbani · 2025-12-06T11:32:03Z

Simple Mode

I didn't have SMTP so I cannot see the next page :-) If you can test it on SUNET test and see how it looks would be great @mickenordin

Advanced Mode

Trying to add a share while the email checkbox is on and the email filed is empty

Re designed the copy section and add a bit of explanation for "non-technical" people, I think this part needs some polishing anyway

Manual accept form

Fixed the text here a little bit, and tried to keep it understandable by anyone
Also make sure that this filed can accept anything even the WAYF link itself!
So when the user accidentally pastes WAYF URL into this box, it will try to find token and provider in that URL string and do the acceptance, if all measures fail, give a proper error message
even on basic mode (no encoded token copy mechanism), this box is able to accept and decode the base64 ones (same as before) so I've clarified that in the text as well

I've decided to make it more configurable like this:

occ config:app:set contacts ocm_invites_optional_mail --value=0|1
occ config:app:set contacts ocm_invites_cc_sender --value=0|1
occ config:app:set contacts ocm_invites_encoded_copy_button --value=0|1

@redblom I have implemented the changes we discussed (including the updated wording for the invite details). When you have a moment, could you please take another look and let me know what you think?

redblom · 2026-04-07T11:28:06Z

@MahdiBaghbani - can you rebase and squash maybe ?

redblom · 2026-04-10T14:57:45Z

@MahdiBaghbani - tested locally and came up with the recommendations below.
Looks great btw. 👍
ps. I'm pushing for merges of this and the required server code. Hopefully soon now.

New Invite:

The email_optional flag:

if set to false the email_optional checkbox is not visible. But if we don't specify an email in the invite form the current message still reads: Please enter an email address or uncheck "Send invite via email".
It should just read: Please enter an email address.

The email:

Optional personal message is missing in the email sent (apparently it's not set anymore in the frontend).

Accept invite forms (popup & manual):

Explanatory messages on these two forms should be aligned. They have diverged.
Proposal for both forms:
- Header: Accept invite to exchange contact info.
- Explanatory message:
  Accepting will add the inviter to your contacts list and in return, your contact info will be sent to the inviter.
  From there on you can start sharing data with each other.

Accept invite form (manual):

the helper and label texts of the input field should match.

All invites list:

An invite that has been send by email, and can be resend ('Resend mail' button visible), also shows the 'Copy invite link&code' buttons. I'm not sure this is useful here.
For invites that have not been sent by email the 'Sent to' field reads: No email (link-only)
I think we can remove (link-only). Or indeed, the whole 'Sent to' row.

Settings:

maybe create commands for the new config settings

MahdiBaghbani · 2026-04-10T16:26:56Z

OK! glad you liked it.
I have a bit of a problem over here; I'll try to sort things out early next week and ask for review again.
BTW, you mean pushing to merge this nextcloud#4417 ? It would be cool!

redblom · 2026-04-10T16:31:44Z

OK! glad you liked it. I have bit of problems over here, I'll try to sort things out early next week and ask for review again.

If you can manage, great, else just give a shout and I can try to do it.

BTW, you mean pushing to merge this nextcloud#4417 ? It would be cool!

Yes! It belongs in there :)

MahdiBaghbani · 2026-04-19T23:31:54Z

@redblom I know I'm taking more than a week to wrap things up 😃 sorry to keep you waiting!

I tried implementing some of @artonge reviews as well.

This is almost ready but needs a bit more edits

redblom · 2026-05-08T11:38:15Z

@MahdiBaghbani - I managed to merge your work but had to revert some things because it did not seem to work properly. Nothing feature wise though, that's all in there !

ps. Can you make sense of https://github.com/nextcloud/contacts/pull/4417/changes#r3087711741 ?

MahdiBaghbani · 2026-05-08T17:53:52Z

@redblom Hi Antoon, sorry for delay :-(

I'm back home and want to work on this in the weekend till morning, I have lots of uncommitted changes in local, is there anything I should know about the force push you did? anything I should adapt myself into?

…ion workflow see https://github.com/cs3org/OCM-API/blob/v1.2.1/IETF-RFC.md Features: - Button to invite remote users to exchange cloudIDs. - Button to manually accept invite to exchange cloudIDs. - WAYF page allowing the receiver of the invite to open and accept the invitation. - Listing of open invitations. - Option to resend, revoke open invitations. Signed-off-by: Antoon P. <antoon.prins@surf.nl> Co-authored-by: Micke Nordin <kano@sunet.se> Co-authored-by: Mahdi Baghbani <mahdi-baghbani@azadehafzar.io>

redblom · 2026-05-08T18:54:12Z

@redblom Hi Antoon, sorry for delay :-(

I'm back home and want to work on this in the weekend till morning, I have lots of uncommitted changes in local, is there anything I should know about the force push you did? anything I should adapt myself into?

Hi @MahdiBaghbani,
Hope your ok.

First of all, I just pushed again because I realized I pushed from the wrong branch (ahum).

Anyway, I wasn't sure about your circumstances so I did the best I could and pushed that.
If you could please start from what I pushed now then the next merge should be easier.
Then I'll continue on Monday. Good luck :)
ps. any chance to have a call next week?

MahdiBaghbani · 2026-05-08T19:39:05Z

Hope your ok.

Thanks!

If you could please start from what I pushed now then the next merge should be easier.

Yes, I'll do it, getting through my unfinished work right now, is there anything significant to the OCM contacts have changed or just some small stuff?

ps. any chance to have a call next week?

Yes, on Monday we can talk (I hope it connects; Internet isn't exactly connected here), although the video probably doesn't work for me so you would only have my voice :-)

MahdiBaghbani · 2026-05-08T20:17:37Z

artonge was objecting to contacts app importing private OC\Core\AppInfo\ConfigLexicon

while the (my) local branch avoids that import now but still uses the core/ocm_invite_accept_dialog app-config key because server-side OCM discovery expects that key

If we want to fully satisfy the review literally, we need either a contacts app owned setting mirrored into the core key, or a server public mechanism so contacts app can provide the invite-accept dialog without changing core private config surface

Correct me if you feel I get his intention wrong

MahdiBaghbani · 2026-05-08T23:15:03Z

I restarted from what you pushed and squashed my side back into one cleaned commit

I also looked again at the artonge comment. I think the correct interpretation is that Contacts should not import Core's private OC\Core\AppInfo\ConfigLexicon, but we still need to write the existing core/ocm_invite_accept_dialog app-config key because current server-side OCM discovery reads that key to advertise the invite accept dialog.

So, the updated branch keeps the key, removes the private Core class dependency, and aligns the discovery/accept flow with the current server contract.

redblom · 2026-05-11T10:20:53Z

+ * Listens to the federated invite accepted event.
+ * Catching the event should lead to the creation of the new remote contact
+ * from the invite, in the inviter's address book.
+ *


This does not work anymore. The event dispatched is OCMEndpointRequestEvent. See https://github.com/sara-nl/nextcloud-contacts/blob/invite-for-cloudid-exchange/lib/Listener/FederatedInviteAcceptedListener.php.
I delegated acceptance and contact creation to FederatedInvitesService.

I have been working on this

Also as per OCM spec the email in payload is required not optional so that has to be fixed too

redblom · 2026-05-11T11:32:00Z

A suggestion from NC was to remove these commands that set only one parameter and people can simply use occ config:app:set {appid} {param} --value {value} --type {type} (nextcloud#4417 (comment)).
I think it makes sense.
Maybe we can put everything into OcmInvitesConfig ?

redblom · 2026-05-11T12:58:07Z

@MahdiBaghbani - the unit tests are fine now !

Signed-off-by: Mahdi Baghbani <mahdi-baghbani@azadehafzar.io>

MahdiBaghbani · 2026-05-12T11:44:46Z

I re checked the inviteAcceptDialog handling against the OCM spec and the paired server change

Contacts still advertise the invite accept dialog in OCM discovery, but it no longer writes the old core/ocm_invite_accept_dialog app-config bridge

Instead, the Contacts discovery listener adds the invite-accepted capability and sets inviteAcceptDialog directly on the LocalOCMDiscoveryEvent provider, matching the ownership model from nextcloud/server#57853

I also folded the old one-off occ commands into contacts:ocm-invites-config, so OCM invite settings are managed through one command instead of separate enable/disable/config commands

I believe that setting the accept dialog in the OCM discovery should be synced with the enable disable of the invites mechanism since if you disable it and then keep advertising it then the discovery would be lying to the remote EFSS systems

I hope you can verify my changes against the server branch of yours since I couldn't really do the live test

MahdiBaghbani · 2026-05-12T11:48:30Z

 	#[\Override]
 	protected function configure(): void {
+		$supportedOptions = implode(', ', $this->getSupportedOptions());
+		$help = <<<HELP


Decide to keep this or remove this, I figured maybe a help would be helpful 😄

Yes. What would be nice is to have an explanation for each setting, what it's for.
Either in this text or per setting.
I'm trying to figure out if that's possible.

redblom · 2026-05-12T13:22:09Z

I re checked the inviteAcceptDialog handling against the OCM spec and the paired server change

Contacts still advertise the invite accept dialog in OCM discovery, but it no longer writes the old core/ocm_invite_accept_dialog app-config bridge

Instead, the Contacts discovery listener adds the invite-accepted capability and sets inviteAcceptDialog directly on the LocalOCMDiscoveryEvent provider, matching the ownership model from nextcloud/server#57853

I also folded the old one-off occ commands into contacts:ocm-invites-config, so OCM invite settings are managed through one command instead of separate enable/disable/config commands

I believe that setting the accept dialog in the OCM discovery should be synced with the enable disable of the invites mechanism since if you disable it and then keep advertising it then the discovery would be lying to the remote EFSS systems

I hope you can verify my changes against the server branch of yours since I couldn't really do the live test

So, I assume that I should remove the core ocm OCM_INVITE_ACCEPT_DIALOG key in nextcloud/server#57853 because only implementers of the invitation workflow (eg. the contacts app) will actually set the the inviteAcceptDialog field in the discovery response.

MahdiBaghbani · 2026-05-12T14:01:42Z

Yes, I think that is the correct thing to do.

I checked both sides again. With nextcloud/server#57853, the server no longer owns the invite-accepted implementation and no longer reads core/ocm_invite_accept_dialog in OCMDiscoveryService.

The Contacts app now registers the invite-accepted capability and sets inviteAcceptDialog directly on the LocalOCMDiscoveryEvent provider.

So the OCM discovery field is still needed, but the core app-config key is no longer needed in this design.

It was only a bridge for the old server-owned discovery behavior. The only thing to keep in mind is that Contacts now depends on the server-side getProvider() API on LocalOCMDiscoveryEvent, so that API needs to exist in whichever server branch this is targeting.

redblom · 2026-05-12T14:31:52Z

So the OCM discovery field is still needed, but the core app-config key is no longer needed in this design.

Yes

MahdiBaghbani mentioned this pull request Nov 29, 2025

Implement WAYF UI with integration of one or more Directory Services, following the current Nextcloud developments cs3org/OCM-STA#1

Closed

mickenordin approved these changes Dec 1, 2025

View reviewed changes

MahdiBaghbani requested a review from mickenordin December 6, 2025 11:32

redblom force-pushed the invite-for-cloudid-exchange branch from 280c35f to 7a8cc14 Compare January 13, 2026 08:41

redblom force-pushed the invite-for-cloudid-exchange branch 2 times, most recently from d6a02e3 to 9b66ad3 Compare January 26, 2026 07:52

redblom force-pushed the invite-for-cloudid-exchange branch from a5432b0 to aed6433 Compare February 3, 2026 14:41

redblom force-pushed the invite-for-cloudid-exchange branch from aed6433 to 299aea5 Compare February 18, 2026 11:24

redblom force-pushed the invite-for-cloudid-exchange branch 2 times, most recently from 3984fd6 to a4ce368 Compare April 8, 2026 14:56

MahdiBaghbani force-pushed the mahdi/fix/ui-optional-email branch 5 times, most recently from 952e001 to 84ae6e9 Compare April 9, 2026 11:56

MahdiBaghbani force-pushed the mahdi/fix/ui-optional-email branch 4 times, most recently from d27eef7 to bdc4766 Compare April 18, 2026 13:59

MahdiBaghbani force-pushed the mahdi/fix/ui-optional-email branch 5 times, most recently from ab8337b to 6c6e79f Compare April 18, 2026 23:12

redblom force-pushed the invite-for-cloudid-exchange branch from e78bd65 to 55dafdf Compare May 8, 2026 14:25

redblom force-pushed the invite-for-cloudid-exchange branch from 55dafdf to e05f396 Compare May 8, 2026 18:44

MahdiBaghbani force-pushed the mahdi/fix/ui-optional-email branch from 6c6e79f to 753d568 Compare May 8, 2026 23:12

redblom reviewed May 11, 2026

View reviewed changes

MahdiBaghbani force-pushed the mahdi/fix/ui-optional-email branch from 753d568 to bd03178 Compare May 11, 2026 12:07

fix(ocm): align invite flow contracts

ae52203

Signed-off-by: Mahdi Baghbani <mahdi-baghbani@azadehafzar.io>

MahdiBaghbani force-pushed the mahdi/fix/ui-optional-email branch from bd03178 to ae52203 Compare May 12, 2026 11:43

MahdiBaghbani commented May 12, 2026

View reviewed changes

redblom force-pushed the invite-for-cloudid-exchange branch 3 times, most recently from 9b4f002 to 5b70cba Compare May 15, 2026 11:23

Conversation

MahdiBaghbani commented Nov 29, 2025 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

OCM Invites: Optional Email and UI Improvements

Email is Now Optional

Invite Labels

UI

Gallery

Pop up changes, email toggle, invalid or not configured smtp error, etc

Creating a test invite with no email

Uh oh!

MahdiBaghbani commented Dec 1, 2025

Uh oh!

mickenordin left a comment

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

redblom commented Dec 1, 2025

Uh oh!

redblom commented Dec 1, 2025

Uh oh!

redblom commented Dec 1, 2025

Uh oh!

MahdiBaghbani commented Dec 1, 2025 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

redblom commented Dec 2, 2025 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

MahdiBaghbani commented Dec 6, 2025 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Simple Mode

Advanced Mode

Manual accept form

Uh oh!

redblom commented Apr 7, 2026

Uh oh!

redblom commented Apr 10, 2026

New Invite:

Accept invite forms (popup & manual):

Accept invite form (manual):

All invites list:

Settings:

Uh oh!

MahdiBaghbani commented Apr 10, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

redblom commented Apr 10, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

MahdiBaghbani commented Apr 19, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

redblom commented May 8, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

MahdiBaghbani commented May 8, 2026

Uh oh!

redblom commented May 8, 2026

Uh oh!

MahdiBaghbani commented May 8, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

MahdiBaghbani commented May 8, 2026

Uh oh!

MahdiBaghbani commented May 8, 2026

Uh oh!

redblom May 11, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

MahdiBaghbani May 11, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

redblom May 11, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

redblom commented May 11, 2026

Uh oh!

MahdiBaghbani commented May 12, 2026

MahdiBaghbani commented Nov 29, 2025 •

edited

Loading

MahdiBaghbani commented Dec 1, 2025 •

edited

Loading

redblom commented Dec 2, 2025 •

edited

Loading

MahdiBaghbani commented Dec 6, 2025 •

edited

Loading

MahdiBaghbani commented Apr 10, 2026 •

edited

Loading

redblom commented Apr 10, 2026 •

edited

Loading

MahdiBaghbani commented Apr 19, 2026 •

edited

Loading

redblom commented May 8, 2026 •

edited

Loading

MahdiBaghbani commented May 8, 2026 •

edited

Loading

redblom May 11, 2026 •

edited

Loading

redblom May 11, 2026 •

edited

Loading