ADR-003 — Communication as 9th Domain

ADR-003: Communication as 9th Top-Level Domain

Status: Accepted | Date: 2026-04-15 | Supersedes: v1 04-semester-management.md SS5, v1 10-admin-system.md SS4

v1 splits communication across two unrelated domains:

Email Management (04-semester-management.md SS5): Semester-scoped automated email templates with trigger conditions, template variables, preview, test-send, and clone-from-previous. Sits alongside Tags, Welcome Package, and Operations as semester configuration.
Notifications (10-admin-system.md SS4): Broadcast push notifications to all users. No recipient filtering. A single form under Admin & System.

There is no blast email, no announcement board, no 1:1 messaging, and no communication audit trail anywhere in v1.

Communication becomes the 9th top-level sidebar domain (IA shifts from 8+1 to 9+1 domains). It contains 6 screens:

Screen	Origin	Type
Automation Emails	Absorbed from 04-semester-management.md SS5 (Email Management)	Existing, enhanced with sequence view
Blast Emails	Net-new	New
Push Notifications	Absorbed from 10-admin-system.md SS4 (Notifications), enhanced with recipient filtering	Existing, enhanced
Announcement Board	Net-new (replaces community board concept)	New
Private Messages	Net-new (bidirectional student/teacher inbox)	New
Communication Logs	Net-new	New

Boundary decision: Issue Queue (10-admin-system.md SS6) stays in Admin & System. It is ticketed support, not messaging.

From the Apr 15 meeting:

Stakeholder wants a unified communication section: "I would like to have like a separate section that's just for like all types of communication like automation emails, email blasts, push notifications."
Blast email is a critical gap: "we don't currently have that as an option at all."
Community board replaced by one-way announcement board; bidirectional 1:1 messaging confirmed despite implementation risk: "We discussed that and we decided to take the risk."
Tags stay where they are (Decision #7) but bulk email will use tags for recipient filtering.

New spec file 11-communication.md defining all 6 screens.
04-semester-management.md: remove SS5 (Email Management) from sidebar items and screen list.
10-admin-system.md: remove SS4 (Notifications) from sidebar items and screen list.
00-spec-index.md: add Communication to SS3 Master Navigation Tree; update screen counts from 35 to 39 (net +4 new screens).

00-spec-index.md SS6 WF1: step 11 ("Semester Management > Email Management") now points to Communication > Automation Emails.
04-semester-management.md SS3.5 (Overview tab) Automation section "View All Emails" link retargets to Communication > Automation Emails.
04-semester-management.md SS3.6 (Setup Checklist) "Email Templates" deep link retargets to Communication > Automation Emails with ?semester=[id].
02-dashboard.md: "Send Notification" quick action retargets to Communication > Push Notifications.
01-global-patterns.md: sidebar definition gains a 9th domain entry.

Email templates lose their co-location with other semester config (Tags, Welcome Package, Operations). Admins configuring a new semester must now cross into a separate domain for email setup. Mitigated by Setup Checklist deep links continuing to work.
Notifications lose their proximity to other system admin tools.

Automation Emails preserves semester-scoping as a filter (not a parent domain constraint).
Mockup scope: all 6 screens get list/form layouts; Private Messages gets a conversation thread UI. Actual message delivery is production-only.
Identity switching was rejected (see ADR-004); replaced with admin pre-drafting for TAs.