PCH: add Recs Block to sidebar

[danielabloch]

Is your feature request related to a problem?

One of the big needs customers have when preparing a post for publication is making sure it connects to related content on their site(s). We are helping with this problem by offering smart links to embed throughout the body of the draft post, and related posts to surface related posts according to certain metas (author, tag, section).

What's missing? The option to quickly add a recommendations block to an article that uses ML to show other content, based on reader behavior + business goals, to improve recirculation through a site.

This is an existing feature available to certain customers in the block editor, but it is not readily apparent unless you know that block exists and are typing in the editor.

Let's make it visible and accessible directly in the PCH sidebar!

Describe the solution you'd like

Add a section to the PCH sidebar for Parse.ly Recommendations.
The section should include a quick description of what the block does, link to related documentation (i think we'll need to update what we have) and all the same functionality available in the block editor but in the sidebar.

Describe alternatives you've considered

The alternative is keeping the Recs Block as is and not surfacing it within the PCH sidebar.

[acicovic]

Inserting the Block is easy, though I agree that users might not be aware of its existence. The Recommendations Block behaves exactly as any other Block, and its visibility is identical to all other Blocks. Searching for it works and it displays when "See All" is clicked.

I've got mixed feelings about this proposal, though no strong opinions. I'd want us to see how we envision doing this (@dabowman) noting that Blocks have their own settings and might not be "injectable" into the PCH Sidebar. We'd need to give this a try to see if it works, and have a "plan B" if it doesn't. Do we abort, or do we still put some text regarding the Block?

I'd also probably give a setting to users to hide that section in case they are aware of the Block's existence and/or they don't want to use the PCH Sidebar for it.

[danielabloch]

im moving this to future milestone because i think it makes more sense to prioritize the existing Recs Block improvements. that way if/when we do incorporate Recs Block into PCH, it has already been improved from its current state.

[acicovic]

Yes, makes sense.