The discussion revolves around bulk updating user category notification levels. The original poster, th21, wants to unmute a category for around 1100 users who had it muted due to a previous default setting.
osioke suggests using the default categories regular site setting, but this only updates 8 users. th21 notes that this setting may not work because the category was previously muted for a group, not globally.
Heliosurge proposes creating a post explaining how to subscribe to a category, but th21 has already tried this without success. Heliosurge suggests that a bulk update feature would be useful.
mattdm explains that group settings only apply when a user joins the group, but offers an alternative solution using the API. th21 requests an example, which mattdm provides in Python, demonstrating how to update a user’s category notifications using the API.
I used to mute a category for all users by default but then find none of them looks at the category list and unmute the category. After I remove the default setting, new users start contribute to the category, the old user(around half) still didn’t where to unmute the category, I tried to use pinned topic to explain how to do it, doesn’t work well.
So is that possible to update the notification level for them?
You’ll want to look at the default categories ... group of settings in your Admin dashboard, if you have removed the categories from the default categories muted site settings, maybe you could use any of the other default categories ... site settings to apply the changes retroactively.
There are the default categories watching, default categories tracking and the default categories regular site settings to use here, they work in retrospect.
I tried to use this setting to unmute the category but it says only 8 users will be updated, but as I check through data explorer, there are roughly 1100 users who have this category muted (due to my previous settings)
Also, the category used to be muted by default for a group, does it make a difference between the default group category vs the global setting?
One solution if there is a common news category. Create a post explaining how to subscribe to a category and provide links to each Category with a description.
I have tried this as well but it doesn’t work as expected…would it be possible to bulk update in the console?
That I am not sure. Imagine it might be possible maybe in the commandline. However not sure on a how to if possible.
I think there should be a feature to do bulk changes for all users or just users in a group.
As I understand it, the group setting just gets applied when a user joins the group. So one approach to adjust this is to create a group with the settings you want to change and add the people you want changed to that group.
You can also do this with the API.
Do you have an example of how to do it through API?
I actually do, yes.
category_notifications = {'muted_category_ids': [54],
'regular_category_ids': [],
'tracked_category_ids': [],
'watched_category_ids': [],
'watched_first_post_category_ids': [61],
}
api(config, f"u/{username}.json", method='put',
json=category_notifications)
… where api() is a thin wrapper around the Requests python module and just does an HTTP PUT to /u/whateverusernameyouarechanging.json on your Discourse site, and the payload is just the categories you want changed. (You can skip any ones you don’t want to change.)
Note that you need the numeric category IDs — names won’t work. And of course if you want to merge or preserve what’s there already you’ll have to read the user first.