CUNY Academic Commons

Thanks, Boone.

For the #1, I understand that "send to group" is the default behavior. It's just that once I uncheck the box, I expect that choice to be saved, even if I save a draft of the post, just like categories are saved when I check or uncheck them.

Regarding #2, I misspoke. When I published the post, I saw a message at the top of the page that said "Post published and sending emails to subscribers:" https://screencast.com/t/ADOcuBfwwywB. That led me to believe that subscribers would receive an email notification. I did receive a notification, but it was from our dev site (I normally receive two notifications of new posts - one from the live site and one from the dev site). So it's not really a bug, but perhaps an interface issue.

Thanks very much for the explanation and especially the screenshot, Gina.

The "Post published and sending emails to subscribers" message comes from Jetpack, and is related to its Subscriptions module. The "Send to group" checkbox is NOT related to this functionality. Instead, 'Send to group' affects whether members of the linked Commons group will receive emails in accordance with their group subscription settings (All Mail, Daily Digest, etc). Here's more info about that module: https://jetpack.com/support/subscriptions/ It appears that there may be a way for us to expose a per-post toggle for Jetpack Subscriptions; see https://jetpack.com/2016/02/10/hook-month-control-subscriptions/ Gina, do you think this would be helpful? (CCing Sonja - I'd like her thoughts on whether this adds too much confusion to enable throughout the Commons)

Regarding the checkbox, I definitely understand your intuition. The 'Send to group' checkbox really indicates a property of the publication action, not of the post more generally. I'm not sure how to change the UI to make this clearer. Maybe Sonja has thoughts about it.

Thanks for this explanation. The odd thing is that I don't recall seeing the Jetpack "sending email to subscribers" message before, which is why I connected it to the "send to group" feature. I don't think a per post toggle for Jetpack subscriptions is necessary for my site, though it's possible that others would find it useful.

I don't know if there's any way to display the "send to group" checkbox next to the Publish button, but that would make it clearer. Since it's in a separate module and users can control their own displays, it's possible that it would not appear anywhere near the Publish button the way it is currently implemented.

Boone Gorges wrote:

Regarding the checkbox, I definitely understand your intuition. The 'Send to group' checkbox really indicates a property of the publication action, not of the post more generally. I'm not sure how to change the UI to make this clearer. Maybe Sonja has thoughts about it.

I'll take a look at this. For context: This option only shows up on Group Sites when crafting a new blog post, correct?

Boone,
can you share the general difference and type of email notifications a user would receive through the Jetpack Subscription functionality and this piece of custom functionality? I want to make sure I fully understand this before replying with a proposed solution. "Send to group" from what I remember means sending a notification email to the group members of an associated site when an author publishes a new post and this checkbox is checked?

I'll take a look at this. For context: This option only shows up on Group Sites when crafting a new blog post, correct?

That's correct.

"Send to group" from what I remember means sending a notification email to the group members of an associated site when an author publishes a new post and this checkbox is checked?

That's right. I'm not totally familiar with how Jetpack notifications work, but those are separate emails that would be formatted like wordpress.com notifications. Jetpack subscriptions are not linked to site or Commons membership - it's a self-service signup mailing list.

Boone Gorges wrote:

Thanks, Sonja. I'll take a look at retaining the unchecked state for 1.16.

Thanks Boone! Can we add this to the list of things to test still?

I just tested this on the dev site, and it seemed to work ok to me -- i.e. I started a post on a group-connected site, and when saving as a draft the post retained the state of the Group Blog or send-to-group area, either checked or unchecked. I will also add this to the testing notes that I'm publishing to the forum now, for others to try.