Preventing email blasts
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I find that every time I post to one of our discussion forums, the entire post gets sent out as an email blast to all the groupsite members. We have some discussions coming up that I don't want out in the wild, but rather posted just to the Discussion Forum page for our groupsite members to read. If every reply is going to wind up as email we will have to forego using Collective X for such discussions.
Is there a way to do this (post topics and reply without issuing email blasts)?
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Dave - The answer is YES you can. In fact, this is one of the reasons we created Groupsites. We believe that standard "listservs" have outgrown their usefullness in that they live entirely in the inbox and most people's inboxes are broken due to being inundated with spam, reply-all time wasters and unorganized chaos.
You need to understand 2 Groupsite concepts: Subscriptions and Discussion Blasts.
Subscriptions
When you "subscribe" to a Discussion Topic (pour an entire Discussion Forum) you will get an email with the complete content of every response in that topic/forum as they happen.
By default, when you join a Groupsite, you are only "subscribed" to those topics that you create or reply to.
Each user can change this default under the MY SETTINGS tab, then select the ""My Preferences" subtab and under the "My Email Preferences" tab, change the default answer to "do not subscribe" in the question about replying to a discussion.
On a case by case basis, you can still subscribe to any topic that you do want to stay in touch with in real time by checking the "email me whenever a reply is posted to this topic" button just below the topic reply section.
Discussion Blasts
The second permission you want to attend to is also under the MY SETTINGS tab, "My Preferences" subtab, in the "My Email Preferences" section. Under "Group Related Email Blasts" we ask you to select "Send me calendar, discussion and email blasts from:" and you can choose either "all group members" or "group managers only".
This allows each user to decide how much they want their Groupsite to be something that "pushes" info to their inbox vesus how much they can go to the Groupsite and "pull" the info themselves.
Finally, as a Groupsite manager, you can decide who has the ability to send calendar, discussion and email blasts in the first place. This is done under the MANAGER tab, then select the "Permission Controls" link from the "Group Settings" page. The first section of the "Basic Permission Controls" allows you to decide for each (calendar, discussion and email blasts) if they can be done by "all group members" or "only managers".
If you have permission to send discussion blasts, it still doesn't mean you have to every time. When you create a new Discussion Topic, if you have permission to send discussion blasts, you will see a checkbox below the reply editor box that reads "email the entire group immediately". If you check this box, your new topic will be blasted to all. If you do not check this box, the only people who will recieve an email are those who have selected to "subscribe" to the Forum where you created this Topic (see above regarding subscriptions).
We feel that the combination of the above methods allow each Groupsite to move closer to or further away from the old school listserv method of sending everything to every inbox every time.
I hope that helps.
Shaun
Shaun - Thanks for the response. I did a test over the past week with our groupsite, and we still have a problem with security.
The problem is that the USER has to re-set his or her permissions re email and subscribing. I sent out detailed directions on how to change the individual permissions, particularly with respect to automatically being subscribed to a discussion topic. From what I can tell, my people have largely ignored them. Individuals are being subscribed automatically upon replying to a discussion topic and those emails are coming out to the rest of the "accidental" subscribers. This is what I wanted to avoid.
What I would like to see is a manager-controlled setting that prevents individuals from becoming automatically subscribed to a particular forum and all its daughter topics. This would not prevent deliberate cut-and-paste copying, but would prevent the automatic email responses to all subscribers.
From what I can tell from your response (and a pretty thorough perusing of the Collective X FAQs) this option is not available to managers. Am I right?
Dave - You are correct, we currently do not have a universal control that a manager can set for this today.
I still am a bit confused by your goal. If it is a "security" issue, perhaps some of these discussions should be held in a private subgroup that is invite only.
If it is an email overload issue that is bothering your users, then it would be in their best interest to follow your instructions and change their default to "do not subscribe".
I do not know the nature of your group but our most successful groups are those where each member has accepted a responsibility to be an active member and has taken the time to do their part (including setting their own permissions).
Shaun
Shaun - I haven't forgotten to reply - I've been running a test. I chair the Ethics Committee for a professional organization, and some of the discussion that takes place simply can't be loosed into the wild via automatic emails upon subscribing. I sent out detailed instructions to the groupsite members (see previous in thread) and sure enough, several of them ignored these instructions and subscribed anyway. This, of course, resulted in their receiving the (very) confidential discussions as emails. Now, for open communication, this is great. Unfortunately, I don't want "open" communication. What I want is basically "eyes only" that the reader has to log in to the groupsite to view.
It does not appear that moving to a private subgroup will prevent these emails from going out if someone accepts the subgroup invitation and "subscribes."
I hope I have explained my situation adequately. I have been following some of the Subgroup discussion threads and it appears that this might be a feature that other people could use.