Best way for staff to send notifications about posts

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AI-generated summary

The discussion revolves around the best way for staff to send notifications about posts to all users on a Discourse site. jmsachs is looking for a way to notify all users about an important post. jomaxro suggests three options: mentioning all users by username, mentioning @trust_level_0 to notify users at trust level 0 and above, or creating a category that all users watch. jomaxro recommends the third option.

jmsachs considers the @trust_level_0 option simpler but feels that none of the approaches are ideal and that staff should be able to notify all users. jomaxro notes that mentioning @trust_level_0 can be restricted to staff only.

Additionally, pfaffman suggests pinning the post globally to make it visible to all users who visit the site, which jmsachs considers suitable for urgent issues but not for their specific case. jmsachs emphasizes the importance of notifications, particularly for infrequent visitors.

1

I’m an admin on an internal Discourse site, and I have an important post I want to notify all users about.

Is there any way to get Discourse to send a notification email to all users, or a group of users? The “Invite” button only lets you send a notification to one person at a time.

2

Lots of existing topics on this here, a quick search should bring them up.

In short, you have 3 options I can think of off the top of my head (I’d recommend #3):

  1. Mention all your users by username in the post. Not ideal, looks messy, and may require site setting changes based on the number of users you have.
  2. Mention @trust_level_0 which will notify users TL0 and above (all users). May require a site setting change to increase max user notified per group mention.
  3. Create a category which all users watch the first post of. You can use (Obsolete) Set category tracking level defaults historically to change the user preference for all users to watch the first post of your new category.
3

And you could pin it globally so that anyone who visited the site would see it.

4

Hmm. The @trust_level_0 option is actually simpler in my case.

None seems like a really good approach though… Staff should be able to notify all but it seems like a bad idea to allow anyone to notify all.

5

Pinning makes sense for urgent issues such as security or site maintenance notices. In my case I want to be a little more subtle.

Also the notification aspect is important; I have a lot of infrequent visitors (< once a month) and I want to notify them.

6

By default no one can mention @trust_level_0. You can restrict the TL0 so that only staff can mention it when you enable mentions.