The discussion revolves around implementing a “Create Only” category restriction for students in a private Discourse instance. gingerman needs this feature to allow students to submit complaints to a specific category without seeing the list of other posts. The ideal use case involves students submitting topics to a “helpdesk” category, which is only accessible by staff members. Students can see their own submitted topics through the “My Posts” header.
Alternative solutions were proposed, including setting up a private category with anonymous emails tobiaseigen and using Private Messages Mittineague. However, gingerman emphasizes the need for a category-based solution, citing the limitations of Private Messages.
sam mentioned that this feature is not on the roadmap for the next couple of releases. gingerman expressed the need for paid customers to feel the importance of this feature. mcwumbly suggested that students should be able to see all their topics in the category, rather than going to the “My Posts” tab.
The discussion concluded with sam stating that the feature is still not on the roadmap.
I have a private discourse instance where the private message option is disabled to avoid bullying / trolling among students
College needs an urgent requirement where the students should have a mechanism to reach a group of staffs for any complaints.
Ideally we need a category where the students can post but not see the list of posts. In other words a category with “Create Only” restriction for students group.
Let me explain the ideal usecase flow below
Student submits a topic to a specific category eg. “helpdesk”. Students cannot see the list of topics in this category (including his topic).
Student can always see his submitted topics/posts through “My Posts” header in the home page.
“helpdesk” category is handled by a group of staff members. They can see all the topics. They can reply to it. May be also create topics for staff discussion.
Any reply from the staff will reach the specific student who posted the topic. The student can reply back. (refer point 2)
If I think about it, it solves lot many usecases like
helpdesk for customers in SAAS / any organization
talk to your CEO / ombudsman kind of scenarios for internal usage in orgs
for personalized training / q & a among introvert audience.
Please let me know how to proceed in this case. Is this something to be added in the core. Will you implement in short term.
In worst case, what will it take to implement by myself as it is a little urgent need.
you could set up a private category that only staff can access, but allow anonymous emails to be posted to it. Doesn’t work via the site itself but will work by email.
@mcwumbly I have updated the original post with the ideal usecase flow.
Student submits a topic to a specific category eg. “helpdesk”. Students cannot see the list of topics in this category (including his topic).
Student can always see his submitted topics/posts through “My Posts” header in the home page.
“helpdesk” category is handled by a group of staff members. They can see all the topics. They can reply to it. May be also create topics for staff discussion.
Any reply from the staff will reach the specific student who posted the topic. The student can reply back. (refer point 2)
I can also see the possible value of separating these tickets into their own category.
But my gut reaction is that it’d be better to allow the students to see all the topics they have created in this category, rather than making them go to a “My Posts” tab.
Don’t you think that would be more straightforward?
That saif, like @Mittineague, I think Private Messages are still a possible solution here worth further consideration, but the group handling may need further thought in that case.
@Mittineague private messages to staff_only group is one way of achieveing it. I think at present it is not possible to enable to specific groups. It is all or nothing scenario as of now. Even if we can set private messages enabled only for admin & moderators, that is a good start.
@mcwumbly You are right in saying that ideally students should be able to see their submitted topics in that category. If it is technically more feasible, I think we should go in this way. My suggestion for only updating the category is from the perspective of minimal work required to achieve the same effect (utilizing the existing features).
A College was using this discourse feature ( anonymous emails to a specific category) for posting homeworks/support requests to a specifc category managed by teaching staffs.
Recently they have started getting spam posts to this email id and we have to revoke this feature.
Discourse is adopted in the college with positive feedback. Like I mentioned at the top, they badly need this feature.
This can be achieved by the below feature
I like to know if this feature will be implemented in the near future. Are there any known problems or side effects of this feature ?
