Automation doesn't send to group

ganncamp · March 17, 2025, 3:11pm

I’ve set up an automation with the ‘Schedule a PM with Data Explorer’ results script.

Despite the field label being “Send to User, Group or Email *”

Colin and I received the PM, but my contact in the JVM group did not.

I’m not finding anything about this in the logs.

Note that another user reported in Sept 23 that sending to groups didn’t work. I’m starting a new thread tho because that thread says “doesn’t appear to support” and based on today’s UI, the automation appears intended to support

ganncamp · March 17, 2025, 3:18pm

It seems that sending to an email address does work, so I subbed-in the group’s email alias.

ganncamp · March 17, 2025, 5:58pm

I’ve just manually set a PM to a small group that I’m in.

I *did not check * ‘Send an individual personal message to each recipient’

And… AFAICT, no one received it.

So I’m guessing this is the problem.

Edit: it seems to have gone to the group-as-an-entity, rather than to any of the group members

ganncamp · March 17, 2025, 6:58pm

Here we go:

github.com/discourse/discourse-data-explorer

lib/discourse_data_explorer/report_generator.rb

2c1861307


      
            def self.filter_recipients_by_query_access(recipients, query)
              users = User.where(username: recipients)
              groups = Group.where(name: recipients)
              emails = recipients - users.pluck(:username) - groups.pluck(:name)
              result = []
          
              users.each do |user|
                result << [user.username, "username"] if Guardian.new(user).user_can_access_query?(query)
              end
          
              groups.each do |group|
                if group.id == Group::AUTO_GROUPS[:admins] || query.query_groups.exists?(group_id: group.id)
                  result << [group.name, "group_name"]
                end
              end
          
              emails.each { |email| result << [email, "email"] if Email.is_valid?(email) }
          
              result
            end
          end

I thought that since all the users in group squad were also in group company, and group company has explicit access to the report that that would work.

But groups don’t get expanded into users (and there’s no option in the UI to turn that on)

davidb · March 18, 2025, 7:22am

Hi, thank you for sharing details of this issue.

Can you check the group setting value:

Group → Manage → Interaction → Who can message this group?

If you can share the value for the JVM group, it will help me to debug this issue.

I will share this feedback with the team to see if we can improve this feature.

ganncamp · March 18, 2025, 11:34am

On my group I see a Messages tab.

Even as a global admin, I don’t see that on the JVM group:

So I added myself to the group, thinking maybe that was why I didn’t see it.
Still no messages tab.

Then I checked the group’s ‘interaction’ settings, and yup, messaging was set to Nobody

So I updated that to ‘Group members, moderators and admins’

But the Messages tab still doesn’t appear for the group, no matter how many times I refresh the page.

The Community Managers messaging is set to Everybody, but I don’t want to do that for this group.

davidb · April 16, 2025, 9:06am

I had a look into this and the interaction setting you selected should be fine, it doesn’t need to be “Everyone” to get the messages tab to show.

There are some additional steps I found that determine if the Messages tab is visible though:

User must be signed in as either a group member or an admin
User must be a member of a PM enabled group (ie. a member of any groups in SiteSetting.personal_message_enabled_groups) - the specific group in question doesn’t have to be in this site setting of group ids, but I think that would be a way to ensure all group members can see the messages tab.
The group has received at least one messages before

In the case you are experiencing I suspect either 2 or 3 is the issue.

We are also working on the automation script to groups to add an option for sending to individual group members. I will share an more details on that when it is ready.

ganncamp · April 16, 2025, 11:18am

Amazing!

In the interim, I’ve realized that to send a report to a group, that individual, specific group has to have explicit permissions to the report, rather than each group recipient having permissions (via another, underlying group). Resolving the group to its users early in the process should keep me from having to add 20 (literally!) groups to every report!

davidb · April 18, 2025, 2:19pm

An update for this is now merged here:

github.com/discourse/discourse-data-explorer

FEATURE: add option to send individual report PM to group members

main ← report-generator-users-from-groups

opened 10:26AM - 18 Apr 25 UTC

dbattersby

+28 -4

This change adds an option to the **Schedule a PM with Data Explorer results** s…cript, which when selected will send individual PMs to each group member selected in the **Send to User, Group or Email** field. <img width="575" alt="Screenshot 2025-04-18 at 12 52 41 PM" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/2215193d-8eae-4ced-b4c5-c67e31942c57" /> When this field is not checked, the functionality for groups will work as it did before (ie. send a single PM to the group). ### When checked <img width="796" alt="Screenshot 2025-04-18 at 2 31 43 PM" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/69f33220-d9b9-4a8e-b2ef-466789a07cf9" /> <img width="747" alt="Screenshot 2025-04-18 at 2 33 29 PM" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/afb83526-5d42-4f3b-803e-ba63248e60ac" /> ### When not checked <img width="794" alt="Screenshot 2025-04-18 at 2 31 59 PM" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b3e6c06d-7f7f-4420-a308-6e222ffbd617" /> <img width="747" alt="Screenshot 2025-04-18 at 2 33 44 PM" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/a72ee1e8-5c8d-4a87-bc10-c1cdb817c263" />

There is now a checkbox in the automation script to send individual PMs to group members. When checked, each group will have the users extracted and message individually.

Hopefully this makes the script work better for your needs.

If adding a group to the Send to User, Group or Email field then that group would need to have access to the data explorer report. The ideal scenario would be to have a larger group (maybe a reporting group) that contains all the members that you want to notify.

ganncamp · April 18, 2025, 2:43pm

So, to be clear:

I have ReportA which is shared to AllEmployees
I want to send it to EmployeeSubgroup

I still have to share the report to EmployeeSubgroup? It’s not enough that Employee1, who is in both EmployeeSubgroup and AllEmployees, has access through a group? She must have access through the “to” group?

(I.e. is report permission checked at the group, before it’s resolved into individual users? Or is the group resolved to users and then the users’ permissions checked?)

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Automation doesn't send to group

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