Add variable to the context to access msgs sent and received in session

[nicpottier]

Something I've seen come up a few times, especially in the context of the ticketing services is the ability to see the entire log of the back and forth between a contact and RapidPro to help create some context for whoever is looking at the ticket.

There isn't any easy way to do this currently. Perhaps it would be interesting to add a "virtual" context element that represents the messages send and received in a session?

Without much thought maybe:

@msgs -> [{
  "uuid": "arst..",
  "text": "Welcome to ..,what is your name?",
  "created_on": "...",
  "direction": "out",
  "channel": {...},
},{
 "uuid": "arst..",
 "text": "Fred",
 "created_on": "..",
 "direction": "in",
 "channel": {..},
}]

This would then let people use @msgs in a template to list all the messages back and forth. We should put some thought into the structure to make sure the few functional tools we have would be useful in filtering and displaying these in flexible formats.

[rowanseymour]

Guessing you saw the mintor ticket but they essentially need something like this. I like the idea of an array tho I do wonder if we should just manually add this to the body, so it can formatted in nicer ways for particular ticket services.

[nicpottier]

No way! Everything is a flow and is configurable, the tablets say so!

[rowanseymour]

Just noting that a user has requested this for emails as well, so that's an argument for something generic that can go in any expression. I think it's an array of message objects and a format function that renders as a list.