[Due for payment 2025-08-07] [Hold] [Due for payment 2025-06-25] [$250] Thread - Thread on a message in IOU creates an extra level of thread

[vincdargento]

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Version Number: v9.1.56-1
Reproducible in staging?: Yes
Reproducible in production?: Yes
If this was caught during regression testing, add the test name, ID and link from TestRail: https://expensify.testrail.io/index.php?/tests/view/6198315
Email or phone of affected tester (no customers): N/A
Issue reported by: Applause Internal Team
Device used: MacBook Air 15.5 Chrome, iPhone 15 iOS 18.4.1 Safari
App Component: Other

Action Performed:

1. Navigate to the staging.new.expensify and sign in with gmail account
2. Create a workspace, create a manual expense in the workspace chat
3. Right click on the expense preview - "Reply in thread", user is navigated to the IOU details
4. Send a message in the expense details, start a thread on that message
5. Verify that "From.." link shows "Expense report #..." - it shows "[Amount] for [Merchant]" instead
6. Send a message. Click on the link in a header to navigate to the parent conversation (should be expense details)
7. Click on the link in the header again to navigate to the workspace chat

Expected Result:

When creating a thread on a message in IOU details, "From.." link shows "Expense report #...". When clicking on the link in a header 2 times, user lands in the workspace chat.

Actual Result:

When creating a thread on a message in IOU details, "From.." link shows "[Amount] for [Merchant]" instead. Clicking on a header navigates to the expense details, then to the report details (which is the same page) and then to the workspace chat.

Workaround:

Unknown

Platforms:

• Android: App
• Android: mWeb Chrome
• iOS: App
• iOS: mWeb Safari
• iOS: mWeb Chrome
• Windows: Chrome
• MacOS: Chrome / Safari
• MacOS: Desktop

Screenshots/Videos

bug.mp4

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Upwork Automation - Do Not Edit

• Upwork Job URL: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~021929986332046016273
• Upwork Job ID: 1929986332046016273
• Last Price Increase: 2025-06-10

Issue Owner

Current Issue Owner: @NicMendonca

[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to @NicMendonca (Bug), see https://stackoverflow.com/c/expensify/questions/14418 for more details. Please add this bug to a GH project, as outlined in the SO.

[dmkt9]

🚨 Edited by proposal-police: This proposal was edited at 2025-06-04 09:08:14 UTC.

Proposal

Please re-state the problem that we are trying to solve in this issue.

When creating a thread on a message in IOU details, "From.." link shows "[Amount] for [Merchant]" instead. Clicking on a header navigates to the expense details, then to the report details (which is the same page) and then to the workspace chat.

What is the root cause of that problem?

1. When the user clicks on the header, they will be navigated based on parentReportID and parentReportActionID:
   

   App/src/components/ParentNavigationSubtitle.tsx

   Lines 89 to 93 in 65799d8

   	if (isVisibleAction) {
   	Navigation.navigate(ROUTES.REPORT_WITH_ID.getRoute(parentReportID, parentReportActionID));
   	} else {
   	Navigation.navigate(ROUTES.REPORT_WITH_ID.getRoute(parentReportID));
   	}

2. The report?.parentReportID and report?.parentReportActionID are passed to ParentNavigationSubtitle here:
   

   App/src/pages/home/HeaderView.tsx

   Lines 420 to 427 in d03ff24

   	{!isEmptyObject(parentNavigationSubtitleData) && (
   	<ParentNavigationSubtitle
   	parentNavigationSubtitleData={parentNavigationSubtitleData}
   	parentReportID={report?.parentReportID}
   	parentReportActionID={report?.parentReportActionID}
   	pressableStyles={[styles.alignSelfStart, styles.mw100]}
   	/>
   	)}

3. Therefore, navigation will be based on the parentReportID and parentReportActionID of the current report.
4. Since the parentReport of the first comment belongs to an expense report, navigating to the parentReport of the first comment will render the entire expense report. This results in repetitive navigation behavior.

What changes do you think we should make in order to solve the problem?

1. We will check if the parent of the parent report is an IOU or Expense. If so, we will use parentReport to render parentNavigationSubtitleData and ignore the current report:
   

   App/src/pages/home/HeaderView.tsx

   Line 153 in d03ff24

   const reportHeaderData = !isTaskReport && !isChatThread && report?.parentReportID ? parentReport : report;

const [parentOfParentReport] = useOnyx(`${ONYXKEYS.COLLECTION.REPORT}${parentReport?.parentReportID}`, {canBeMissing: true});
const reportHeaderData =
    ((!isTaskReport && !isChatThread) || (parentOfParentReport && (isIOUReport(parentOfParentReport) || isExpenseReport(parentOfParentReport)))) && report?.parentReportID
        ? parentReport
        : report;

2. Use reportHeaderData to pass to ParentNavigationSubtitle:
   

   App/src/pages/home/HeaderView.tsx

   Lines 421 to 426 in d03ff24

   	<ParentNavigationSubtitle
   	parentNavigationSubtitleData={parentNavigationSubtitleData}
   	parentReportID={report?.parentReportID}
   	parentReportActionID={report?.parentReportActionID}
   	pressableStyles={[styles.alignSelfStart, styles.mw100]}
   	/>

<ParentNavigationSubtitle
    parentNavigationSubtitleData={parentNavigationSubtitleData}
    parentReportID={reportHeaderData?.parentReportID}
    parentReportActionID={reportHeaderData?.parentReportActionID}
    pressableStyles={[styles.alignSelfStart, styles.mw100]}
/>

What specific scenarios should we cover in automated tests to prevent reintroducing this issue in the future?

NA

What alternative solutions did you explore? (Optional)

NA

Result:

bandicam.2025-06-04.16-06-27-240.mp4

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[melvin-bot]

Job added to Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~021929986332046016273

[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to Contributor-plus team member for initial proposal review - @eh2077 (External)

[eh2077]

@dmkt9 Thanks for your proposal! I tried to understand your RCA, can you elaborate on the navigation steps? Please checkout the recoding from 0:43 to 0:45 in the bug report. See the following two pages, are they both expected? If not, why?

[dmkt9]

Please checkout the recoding from 0:43 to 0:45 in the bug report. See the following two pages, are they both expected? If not, why?

@eh2077 If we follow the logic of the code, then I believe this is the expected behavior—simply continuously navigating up to the parent report.

However, since the parent report of comments in expenses or IOUs is rendered similarly to the expenses and IOUs themselves, this navigation can feel repetitive. If we prefer to avoid this repetitiveness, we could modify the behavior rather than considering it a bug.

[eh2077]

I think this page should be unexpected and redundant

• We don't visit this page when replying in thread - We have optimized it to navigate to the expense detail page
• It's only shown when navigating back by clicking link of the header

What do you think?

[dmkt9]

I think this page should be unexpected and redundant

• We don't visit this page when replying in thread - We have optimized it to navigate to the expense detail page
• It's only shown when navigating back by clicking link of the header

What do you think?

I think so too. I believe that as a user, navigating to this page would not involve any actions.