Discourse BCC

Customization Plugin
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AI-generated summary

The Discourse BCC plugin, an experimental tool maintained by the Discourse team, allows staff users to send individual personal messages (PMs) to multiple recipients simultaneously. When enabled, users can check a box after adding two or more recipients to create separate PMs for each person rather than a single shared thread. The plugin also supports group messaging, where each member receives an individual PM, and allows for message personalization using placeholders like %{username}.

During the discussion, md-misko requested the ability to enable this feature for custom groups, such as course organizers, to streamline sending questionnaires to participants. ToddZ suggested an alternative using the Discourse Private Replies plugin, which keeps replies to a topic hidden from other participants in a specific category, though subsequent replies remain visible. MihirR clarified that the BCC functionality applies only to PMs, not Chats, as confirmed by NateDhaliwal.

Technical issues were reported by nathank and putty, who encountered 500 errors when attempting to use the plugin. martin asked for more diagnostic details, noting that local testing worked correctly. putty later reported that the issue resolved itself, noting that the option to send individual PMs within a group became visible, leading martin to confirm that the functionality was working as expected.

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:discourse2: Summary Discourse BCC allows staff users to send individual personal messages to several users at once.
:hammer_and_wrench: Repository Link https://github.com/discourse/discourse-bcc
:open_book: Install Guide How to install plugins in Discourse

Features

When enabled, you’ll see a checkbox after having added two or more recipients to a PM:

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If you check that box, instead of one PM that everyone shares access to, Discourse will create 1 PM per user provided.

If you add a group, each member of the group will be sent an individual PM.

You can also use the placeholders %{username}, %{@username}, and %{name} to add message personalization for each recipient.

77 Likes
Discourse 2.4.0.beta8 Release Notes
Bcc plugin placeholders not working
Send DM to @trust_level_0 let others to reply
How to edit sign up form?
Bulk private message users
BCC plugin glitches when you PM an email address
Advice on a support forum
Group Messages As Announcement
Any way to send PM to TL2 without including TL3 and TL4?
Allow write access without read access
Send a message to an inactive group
Blind cc type feature for pms
Add %{name} variable to BCC plugin
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3 posts were split to a new topic: Add %{first name} variable to BCC plugin

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Is there any chance to enable custom groups to use this plugin, similar to Changes coming to settings for giving access to features (from trust levels to groups)?

I have a use case where a course lecturer sends the same questionnaire via PM to the course participants occasionally, but wishes to receive separate responses from each one.

Being able to assign a custom group (e.g. organizers) in addition to staff to use the BCC plugin would solve the problem for them in a big way (they’re currently sending dozens of identical PMs).

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@md-misko - I wonder if your need might be met by the Discourse Private Replies plugin. Basically, you’d create a course category with access for the participant group, rather than using PMs. The plugin can then keep replies to a lecturer topic hidden from other participants.

(A caveat is that any subsequent reply from the lecturer back to a participant is visible to all. Depending on your situation that may or may not matter.)

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67

So is it for the Messages like the mail kind of look, or both Messages and Chats?

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It’s only for PMs (messages).

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I’m getting a 500 error when attempting to use this plugin, even for the simplest of messages and just 2 users.

Is anyone else having trouble?

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Yes, also getting a 500 error :frowning:

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@nathank and @putty can you give a bit more detail please, like are there any details in the Network tab in chrome or at the /logs endpoint on your site? I tried it locally and it worked:

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@putty do you have it installed on your hosted site? If so I can access the logs there.

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Hey @martin!
I have good news and bad news. It is surprisingly working (:partying_face:), but only if I message individual users. I could’ve sworn that you could do the same group, though. Or am I misremembering the functionality?

It is deployed on my site if you want to take a look :+1:

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@martin FYI, now I can see the option to send individual PMs within a group

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So everything is working as expected? Or there is still an issue? So weird, I didn’t do anything :sweat_smile: