Managing email subscriptions to forum updates
Current behavior:
Members can subscribe to receive updates about forum posts by email - by going to the forum and clicking on a subscription link in that forum or topic
However, there is no way for administrator to view their subscription status or change it.
If administrator wants to subscribe them manually, the only way is to log in under member's profile (so he has to know the password) and subscribe to forums as if he is this member - very crude workaround.
Admin can only remove subscriptions from member records.
Desired behavior:
- Allow administrator to subscribe member(s) to one or more forums and edit subscription options in member record (subscribe and unsubscribe)
- Add forum subscription to the membership application page, including default subscription settings
AdminKatya Tyukina
(Product Manager, Wild Apricot by Personify)
shared this idea
111 comments
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Zoe Brookes
commented
Me too.
I am using WA to coordinate working groups among busy volunteers. I'm lucky if they'll spend five minutes considering an issue. It's just too much to expect them to go online and subscribe to every new discussion, so this isn't working. I need to be able to say "I've set up a forum and you'll get messages from it whenever they're posted"
We've been using WA since September 1 and love it for lots of reasons, but this is a real downside right now.
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Sharon Graham
commented
It would be helpful if members were registered to multiple forums as the default by the administrator.
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ClayR
commented
really need this feature to subscribe people by default or all at once.
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ClayR
commented
The forums are nearly useless for us if we can't get a substantial number of people to subscribe to them by default.
We really need to Opt-in new members by default. (should be a system setting)
Would also be very nice to see/export/search for members who are currently receiving the forum emails and those who aren't. (we could send an email to members who aren't subscribed to ask them to subscribe, at the very least)
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spet
commented
Now that you can see what discussions/forums an individual has subscribed to in their contact info, it would great to be able to export this information or create a report where you can see all of the people who have subscribed to individual discussions/forums. We have users who lead discussion groups on our website and they have asked for a list of who has subscribed. Right now, we can't give that to them. It would be a really great feature and would be very useful.
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michellebw
commented
We'd like the ability to by default to sign up members for certain forums. If they want to unsubscribe, great, but start them out subscribed.
We'd also the ability for admins to change the settings; example, we ask the board members to be subscribe to the board forum but some forget and the admins can't alter member forum settings.
We'd like these features.
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Ann
commented
Yes -- knowing who had subscibed to a forum would be helpful. It would help us know if its worth posting info on a particular forum we've created (if no one is subscribed we wouldn't want to post something to a forum that is time sensitive because no one will see it)
It would also be nice if an administrator could subscribe members to a forum.. we have some technically challenged members that would like to recieve updates but we found we to embarrassed (or lazy) to let us know they couldn't figure out how to subscribed.
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Dmitry Buterin commented
I totally agree with your point about the usefulness of seeing a particular person's posts (And I would appreciate if you could create a thread on this) - but this thread is about something else, about seeing people who signed up to receive email notifications about a particular forum.
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Anne_K
commented
Situations when we would like to see a list of each user's posts would include: when I know I posted something on a particular topic and want to follow up on it (and I forgot to subscribe to the topic) and I can't find it because the forum is large and I don't have time to sort through it all. Or, when I find a particular user's posts more helpful or informative than others, I would like to see what they had to say in their other posts on different topics. Also, we encourage members to be active on our forums and offer a reduced membership fee for a certain amount of participation - tracking this would be much easier if each member had a list of their posts. And of course, having the ability to see who is subscribed to a forum would help administrators communicate more easily with certain members depending on the member's interests.
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I am curious - what is the situation when you need to find this out and how it would be used further?
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Question: another way to look at this is to provide a way to specify default subscription option for new members - so they automatically get subscribed without having to do anything.
E.g. there can be 'default forum subscription settings page' which would apply for new members and potentially can have an option to apply to existing users (e.g after initial import or if forums are changed around)
What do you think?
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ranvest
commented
My members recently asked if they could subscribe to our various topical forums as a group with a single subscription, as opposed to subscribing to each forum individually. They are accustomed to the old Yahoo list serve and are perhaps a bit lazy. But when I thought about the idea it seemed to make sense.
The whole point of topic-specific forums was to make it easier to find specific types of information and comments. Unfortunately, in my case it seems to be generating the reverse effect. Instead of getting involved in discussions they are avoiding them. So, if you can see the value of an option that allows a member to subscribe to all current and future forums in a single operation, I would like to offer that as a feature enhancement.
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Anne_K
commented
I agree, it would be nice to see who is subscribed to a forum.
It would also be useful to see posts by each user - like in these WA forums when you click on the user's name and it brings you to a page with a tab that shows all of their posts. That is how I found this post; I was reading it in the general forum where Dmitry asked Chuck to repost it in the wishlist. So all I had to do was click a couple links instead of searching the wishlist forum.
Anne
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MaxAugust
commented
We'd like to see this feature added too. Most of our member/users are not savvy enough to know that they have to "subscribe". We'd like to be able to have the option of setting the default for all member/users be "subscribed" to all forums, blogs, etc.
Thanks.
Max August
New Mexico Collaborative Practice Group
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Will, there is currently no way to obtain this information, I will move this to our wishlist.
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wmorrison
commented
Hi,
Is there a way to see either the number of addresses and/or the actual email addresses of those subscribing to a forum?
Currently there is no way of determining the number of readers.
Thx
Will Morrison
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Chuck, thanks for posting.
Everybody - please comment/vote to help us determine the priority of this.
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Chuck Kee
commented
Would like a way to see a list of users that are subscribed to a forum? If not the list, maybe a count.
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FYI - we are also planning a feature to pre-set which forums new members are automatically subscribed to.
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michellebw
commented
Jim, I'd really like to see this as a feature -- the ability to bulk-set all the members to be subscribed to the Member Forum. This would be the preferred default, then if the members did not want it, they could unsubscribe. The way it is now, we have to rely on them going to the site, and hitting subscribe, which most of then cannot be relied on to do, even thought they would welcome the regular updates. I'd like to see this on the Roadmap. thanks
