In a support thread titled ‘Does Online / Offline Status Affect Email Notifications?’, HockeyDevil07 reports that users are not receiving email notifications for DM chats and threads, despite having email preferences set to ‘always’. They suspect the issue may stem from users leaving browser tabs open, causing the system to assume they are online and thus suppress emails. HockeyDevil07 asks whether manually setting status to ‘offline’ would force emails to send regardless of browser activity, referencing an old setting mentioned by codinghorror that allowed emails even when actively pinging the site — though they’re unsure if it still exists. Ethsim2 asks if the missing emails appear in the ‘Skipped’ log, to which HockeyDevil07 replies they’re absent from both ‘Skipped’ and ‘Sent’ logs, suggesting no emails are being triggered. Moin asks for clarification on chat type (DM, public, thread) and notification level, noting that chat email notifications may be delayed up to 24 hours — but HockeyDevil07 confirms the delay isn’t the issue, as no emails appear at all. The core question remains: does the online/offline toggle affect email delivery, and can forcing ‘offline’ status resolve missed notifications for users with idle browser tabs?
I am working with some people that are having issues receiving email notifications. Similar to what’s mentioned here:
They claim they aren’t receiving notifications for chats or for mentions in topics, etc.
I’ve suggested to them them that if they keep the site open in a browser tab, they may not receive notifications because it’ll assume they’re on the site.
From the above topic:
Is “(email me notifications even if I have a browser open actively pinging the website)“ still a setting? I am not sure but I think it having ‘always’ selected for the current preference “Email me when I am quoted, replied to, my @username is mentioned, or when there is new activity in my watched categories, tags or topics” is its equivalent. I’d like to take advantage of this option.
I can confirm they have that set to ‘always’ on the emails preference page. The chat preference page does not have that though, it only has “Only when away”. I’m thinking not receiving chat notifications might be the main issue.
I’m wondering whether the online / offline toggle mentioned here affects these email notifications. If someone were to mark themselves as “offline” would that make sure they always receive those emails, even if they have a browser tab open with the site in it?
If there’s anything I’m missing I’m open to other suggestions on trying to make sure they get emails as well.
Are you missing notifications about a public chat, a dm chat, a thread? Is it about new messages or an @mention? And in case of a thread what is the notification level of the thread?
@Ethsim2 I do not see them in the ‘Skipped’ log, or the ‘Sent’ log.
@Moin the people with the issue are claiming it’s from DM chats and threads. I wasn’t sure they actually weren’t receiving them until I just discovered the “sent” and “skipped” logs. I thought maybe it was a spam thing or something on their end, but I just sent chat messages to one of them yesterday and the last email in both of those logs is from 4 days ago.
Since this is other users I can’t be sure what their settings are on the threads. I’d have to wait to hear back.
24 hours is a fine time to wait. It just looks like they aren’t sending at all looking now at the “sent” logs.
I was hoping if everyone switched their “status” to offline, it’d help some of these go through. I’d like to understand more about how that works. I have to assume people leave browser tabs of the site open while they aren’t actually active, resulting in them not getting notified.
