Improve awareness for automatic workspace deletion due to garbage collection

[gtsiolis]

Problem

We receive quite a few requests to restore deleted workspaces due to Garbage Collection which automatically deletes unused workspaces after 14 days of inactivity.

Old, unused workspaces are automatically deleted.

See relevant requests [1][2][3][...] (internal).

Context

While there's a message in the dashboard informing users about this, a user can easily dismiss this message and forget about garbage collection which can lead to more incoming requests to restore deleted workspaces.

A message at the top of the workspaces list indicates after how many days unused ...

Pinning or restarting the workspace can help keeping the workspace from being deleted but this is also not clear to the user as this is not a common interaction or pattern.

... unpinned workspaces will get collected (the exact number of days may change in the future). Restarting a workspace resets the day counter for this particular workspace.

We want to educate users about using fresh workspaces for new tasks but also help them understand how to use the product efficiently as well as provide useful product features that allow users to have more control over content and more.

Proposal

There are a few ways we could try resolving this issue so that a) less users request to restore deleted workspaces and b) more users have more control over content.

Plan A (Minimum Viable Change)

Email: To mitigate this, we could start by sending an email notification to the user, X days before a workspace deletion, for workspaces with pending changes.

Plan B

We're planning to add better workspace filters to group running and stopped workspaces.

Filter: We could add a third filter option for deleted workspaces which resembles deleted items in email, etc.

This could have the following benefits:

1. Automatically removing deleted items is a common pattern and interaction, for example see deleted email messages.
2. Allow users to restore automatically deleted workspaces due to garbage collection.
3. Allow users to have more control as they can restore accidentally deleted workspaces by themselves.
4. Allow the product to have a non-dismissable message on the top of the list about garbage collection.

Note: The mockups below contain early drafts from the effort to add Projects in the dashboard. These are used only to illustrate the concept of filters and the non-dismissible message on the top of the workspaces list.

Running Workspaces	Recent (Stopped) Workspaces	Deleted (Stopped) Workspaces

Alternative: Alternatively, we could use the the Recent workspaces list to show the non-dismissible message about garbage collection and do not add a Deleted workspaces list.

Email: Once this filter has been added and users are better informed about garbage collection, we could a) remove the email notification about workspace deletion or b) keep this notification for workspaces with pending changes.

Benefits

This could probably lead to:

1. Better product experience
2. More control over content
3. Less support requests to restore deleted workspaces

[gtsiolis]

See also relevant feature request (internal).

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[gtsiolis]

Still an issue. Will be resolved in #3300.

[gtsiolis]

Resolved with the dashboard redesign. ✔️