Resolved Are Notifications Getting to Group Members?

wlburton

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I've been trying to organize a group get-together of the Upper Midwest Hobby Machinists group on August 24th and, aside from a few people who received the notification through a local email list that we generated at the last get-together in February, I haven't had any responses--yea or nay--from the 58 people listed as members of the group, including some I'm almost certain would want to attend. Is there any way to check if the notifications are actually going out to group members? I'm also still having the problem when posting the notifications that the site keeps telling me that it's not posting due to a server error--but it actually is posting (resulting in duplicate posts the other day that the moderators dealt with for me). Additionally, the site says I should post in Group Discussions rather than Group Forums, but all of the conversations about the last get-together seem to have been in the Group Forums area. Consequently, I've been trying to post in both. I just did a "reminder" post in the Group Discussions area so I'll see if that gets any action. Thanks for your help!

Bill Burton
 
Well, faster than I anticipated. The push notifications is fully enabled. Go ahead and test @wlburton !
 
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Well, faster than I anticipated. The push notifications is fully enabled. Go ahead and test @wlburton !
@wlburton , I am not seeing any problems at this moment. I am receiving alerts, notifications and push notification etc. per my preferences. The PHP upgrade we requested last night allowed me to enable push notifications for the website. When you login, you will see a small menu pop up on the bottom of your screen asking to enable Push Notifications. This is a matter of preference and is one more redundant way for you to receive notifications. You may be asking: "what in the heck is Bryan talking about and isn't an alert a notification?"

Alerts appears to have two meanings in the Xenforo world...as a catchall term for notifications and your preferences; these are the actions you see within the forum software based on your preferences all of which is accessible through the little bell up in the right hand corner. When you see a number over the bell on your menu above, you have an alert. Click on the bell and you can read your alerts.

Notifications are also the actions based on your preferences, but based on what I've gathered reviewing all of the options in alerts, notifications can take the form of an email that is sent automatically if you choose. The usefulness of this seems to be if you aren't logged in, you still can get alerts while not logged in. If a user hasn't logged in for a while AND chose to not receive email notifications for new threads or posts, then it is possible they are not aware of posts you would like them to be aware of.

Push Notifications are like alerts except they are being pushed out of Xenforo and into your web browser. This is not a cookie, per say, but more of a code extension (PHP!, @wa5cab ) that is changed in your web browsers permissions when you grant Xenforo permission to do so. This takes the form of a little window in the corner of your screen, from your web browser, alerting you to a new post or thread. This is one way communication - it's going to pop up a little window in the corner of your screen while you are on the web. The convenience here is that you don't have to go to the thread to see something new, you don't need to go to your alert menu, it will just pop up alerts. Some people like the convenience, some people hate the clutter and distractions of pop-ups as they occur.

All of this is customizable in your preferences menu under Alerts, or click on the little bell and go to preferences from there.

I think I'll do a little screen shot tutorial of this in the How-To section. There are a gazillion options and can be confusing. Maybe that will help clarify how to use the system a little better to both new and old users alike.

I'll leave this post marked as "Working On It" for another day or so and then close it out as Resolved if I don't hear any additional feedback.
 
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It's hard to know for sure, but I don't think people got the notification. The only person who responded to it I had emailed about it and then he apparently found it and responded to it. I had emailed the dozen people that had come to our get-together in February--we had collected contact information then--and it looks like we're going to have about ten of them this time, but heard nothing from the 58 people listed in the group other than those I was able to email. Given that my house and shop aren't all that big that's probably a good number anyway, but it would be nice to get more people involved. In February the communication did all take place in the Upper Midwest Machinists group area so we know it worked then.
 
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@wlburton - any updates? Things working as they should?
We had our get-together today and a great time was had by all. There were only seven of us, which was enough to have a good time, but I can definitely tell you now that notifications are NOT going out to Upper Midwest Machinists group members. No one had received a notification of my posts from H-M and they only knew about it from the emails I sent to the few people whose email addresses I had. I'm sure we would have had a lot more people if they had known about it. For all of our previous get-togethers all of the group members did get notifications and a lot of people responded, so something that worked then is not working now! I have no idea how any of this works, but I assume it's the same problem for all the regional groups, so it's probably putting a damper on regional activities. I hope this information is helpful.

Bill
 
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I've done some more digging on this matter. There are a couple of obscure options and reminders for members that should be stated. First a reminder, as both Robert and I have alluded to members should receive notifications if they are a member of the group. One obscure setting that is currently working here is that members who have not been active (logged in) in the past 300 days will not receive notifications. This reduces the load on the the servers for the vast majority of members who don't visit regularly.

Also, it is possible that if a member is not "watching" a thread, they will not receive notifications from the group that the thread is contained in.

Many members will turn off notifications because they don't want to be inundated with dings and beeps and clogging of their inboxes. That may be what you are up against here. I've been promising to do a How-To tutorial on managing preferences and notifications so this may be the thing that pushes me to get that done sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, if members can check their preferences on notifications, especially if they are in groups and want to stay in touch with group members...get in there and turn them on!
 
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It's strange that it worked fine in February but doesn't work at all now. Since there seem to be no notifications now (I know I never received any emails about any of the posts and I'm pretty sure my preferences are set correctly, and others said the same), there's no way for me to let group members know that they should check their preferences. If you're going to do a tutorial another thing that needs to be clarified is the difference between "Group Forums" and "Group Discussions" (or maybe one of them should just be eliminated as an option). Thanks again.
Bill
 
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Bill, I think I have this figured out. I believe that there is a difference between Group Discussions and Group Forums. I will PM you and we can do a little experiment to see if I'm right.
 
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Groups feature was discontinued last year and is no longer supported. This thread is closed.
 
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