Hello again,

I've got one group that all site members belong to. The group is managed by one person. I'm trying to determine how (if it is even possible) the group owner can send a notification to all members of the group, either into their AS inbox, or preferably even to their email accounts. 

The Events feature allows this as it has the invite function and sends notifications out. But can other journal types also be sent out, or do all members always  have to come to the group page to get updates?

I've seen the Subscribe link top right in the group page, but so far that doesn't have anything on it when clicked - just a Save button. What I'm after is to have members auto-subscribed to certain updates right from the start.

Is that possible? Or if not through the journal, then maybe it has to be done through the group's forum?

Regards
Rob

AS 1.9.2 DNN 5.5.1

Sending messages to their AS inbox is easy. If the group owner composes a new message, they can enter the name of the group, and the auto-complete will display it. However, there have been performance issues with this method, depending on how many users you have on your site. AS has to send the message to all their inboxes, and then also send emails. Unless you have a very powerful server, this action may time out.

The best way, in my opinion, to send a message to all users on the site, is to create a forum, then add the registered users role to the auto-subscribe feature. Then any message you post in that forum, will be emailed to all users.

Why wouldn't Active Social use the same mail queue system that Active Forums Enterprise has?

It it doesn't, I would argue that it should. This is really important functionality that needs to be robust.

Posted By Ben on 23 Mar 2011 10:37 AM
Sending messages to their AS inbox is easy. If the group owner composes a new message, they can enter the name of the group, and the auto-complete will display it. However, there have been performance issues with this method, depending on how many users you have on your site. AS has to send the message to all their inboxes, and then also send emails. Unless you have a very powerful server, this action may time out.

The best way, in my opinion, to send a message to all users on the site, is to create a forum, then add the registered users role to the auto-subscribe feature. Then any message you post in that forum, will be emailed to all users.

sending messages to all their inboxes is actually only creating a recordset of mail records plus associated notices, so their should be no overhead here. (unless i am very mistaken about how this works).

I'll try that out thanks... the server is grunty and the membership limited. It'd definitely be handy to be able to email out to all group members in a robust manner. Push communication to group members is really the whole point of this.
Rob

Comments on this Ben? I am wanting to create a site-wide- & auto-group to allow emailed notifications to start allowing folks quick and easy linked access to posts, but worry that this will backfire if your code will be timing out quickly. This is fairly major functionality issues with respect to social networks and as such would like to see some comments here from you et al to see what is evolving. Asking us to resort to AF is not an acceptable solution in the context of growing a social site focussing on groups.

Drew, How many members do you have? We have customers with multiple groups with a couple thousand members and it isn't an issue. Is this an actual problem for you right now? If so, how many members are in the group?