Hey all,
Is it possible to set up multiple Topic Timers – for example: publish, and then a separate one to auto-close the thread. I have a direct need for this…it’s not a deal breaker for it not to exist…just automation is amazing.
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Is this what you’re after?
Auto-closing is already core.
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Not possible right now as we only allow one public topic timer (publish, closing, opening) per topic. As a workaround now, you could set a publish topic timer and add a reminder for yourself to close the topic.
Could you build on your use case a little as to why you have a need for multiple topic timers? Multiple topic timers is not impossible but tricky to deal with as we now have to make sure that there isn’t any overlap with the time range.
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I pretty much wanted a publish timer and a timer to close the topic automatically…not much more to it.
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Here’s my use case for two topic timers on the same topic.
In my community, we have a recurring weekly topic called Wow Us Wednesday. It’s a 24 hour period for members to do self-promotion as we’ve found they need a time and place to vent their promotional steam.
We use the existing topic timer functionality to automatically close the topic 24 hours after being published – mostly so promotion stays contained to a specific weekly time frame and doesn’t keep bubbling back up to the top all the time.
However, using the auto close topic timer prohibits me from using the schedule publishing topic timer – and I want to use both.
I would prefer to schedule 4-8 weekly Wow Us Wednesday topics all at once from an efficiency perspective. Right now, I can’t use the schedule publishing topic timer as my one topic timer because, if I miss my window to manually close the topic 24 hours after it’s published, members can do self-promotion beyond our 24 hour concentrated time frame.
Since our Wow Us Wednesday takes place from 12:00 a.m. PDT - 11:59 p.m. PDT and I’m two hours ahead in CDT, I’d have to wake up at 2:00 a.m. to manually close the topic – something I’m not keen to do. That says nothing of my changed responsibilities if I’m on vacation, sick, or can’t find another admin in a different time zone to manually close the topic.
Having two topic timers on the same topic wouldn’t be revolutionary for me. But it would sure make my scheduling and team coordination easier, and I imagine hundreds of other Discourse users would say the same.
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Interesting use case.
I think there is totally merit for supporting “delay published, auto closing” topics. I can see use cases where it is useful.
A current workaround is to post it to a category with auto-close topic hours set, would that not work?
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I appreciate the workaround suggestion, Sam. I could see it working for some Discourse users … the issue is it doesn’t work for mine.
The self-promotion threads are published to a category called “Anything Goes” and the nature of the category is to have wide-ranging conversations. The only forum threads in the category I’d want to auto-close are the self-promotion focused ones I publish. The rest are published by community members and I want to leave replies open indefinitely.
Granted, I could create a new category specifically for these weekly self-promotion posts. But we’re wary of the communication and UX tradeoffs when we create new categories and try to do it as infrequently as possible.
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How about a “wow us Wednesday” subcategory of “anything goes”?
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Stephen, we played with the idea of having a “Wow Us Wednesday” sub-category of the “Anything Goes” master category. However, despite the efficiency gain of being able to have a dedicated sub-category with the ability to auto-close all topics in it after 24 hours, we weren’t willing to make the trade off in UX.
For example, having a sub-category filter in the Anything Goes category for the Wow Us Wednesday sub-category and seeing the standalone Wow Us Wednesday sub-category on the the Categories view page (e.g., https://yourforum.com/categories) draws too much attention to the fact that we have a dedicated sub-category for self-promotion.
Our goal is to limit the visibility of self-promotion for the 144 out of the 168 hours each week where we’re not actively doing self-promotion.
I’m grateful for the suggestion. I’ll just wait until @sam or someone else on the Discourse Team develops the “delay published, auto closing” feature Sam mentioned he’d like to see.
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Did you experiment with hiding that particular subcategory from /categories using css?
I have another use case for publish-then-close: I am running a course, where we are posting announcements inviting input for each course activity, and afterwards closing the announcement after the corresponding activity (lecture or Q&A) is over. An auto-close category wouldn’t quite work because different activities have different expiration.
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Hi, tried to setup multiple timers for recurring events. Allowing 2 - 3 would be useful!
- Delayed Publish
- Delete All Replies after 7 days
- Auto Bump weekly, or bi-weekly, before the event recurs.
Thanks for considering. Also using new automation plugin to:
Auto-Pin topic the day before next occurrence. Hoping to eventually set this as recurring weekly / bi-weekly / monthly rather than on a specific day. ← This how we’ve configured our Event plugin.
Perhaps there could be more interplay between topic timers and the automation plugin in the future. Cheers.
Another topic timer option that could be useful:
- Remove all emoticons from topic.
This is because users like to use emoticons to interact with a topic when they agree / disagree, etc.
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That belongs in the event plugin IMO.
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Mon cas d’utilisation est pour les fils de discussion de jeux.
Je veux lancer le fil de discussion VERROUILLÉ à minuit car les gens commenceront à le chercher à partir de notre blog d’événement d’une semaine. Cela, je peux le faire.
Je veux le déverrouiller à 9h lorsque le jeu commence réellement. La seule façon pour moi de le faire est de rester éveillé après minuit pour régler une autre minuterie ou de le faire manuellement à 9h.
Un autre cas d’utilisation concerne les fils de discussion de cadeaux. J’aimerais pouvoir envoyer les heures de lancement et de clôture en même temps au lieu d’attendre son lancement pour définir l’heure de fin.
J’adorerais pouvoir régler deux minuteries. Je vois bien que cela peut devenir un peu délicat si elles entrent en conflit, mais peut-être limiter les cas d’utilisation ou y mettre des contrôles et des équilibres.
Merci !
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Serait-il utile de diviser cela en une demande de fonctionnalité spécifique pour les publications planifiées qui se ferment automatiquement ?
La solution de contournement consistant à avoir une catégorie à fermeture automatique a du sens en général, mais je souhaite le faire pour un ensemble spécifique de conversations dans le cadre d’une discussion structurée au cours des prochains mois, et la mise en place d’une catégorie distincte semble lourde pour cela.
Pourquoi ne pas simplement le faire en tant que sous-catégorie distincte ? Ce n’est pas si mal, et vous pouvez le configurer de sorte que vos utilisateurs ne le remarqueront probablement même pas.
Mes utilisateurs sont très observateurs. 
Beaucoup ont configuré des filtres pour trier leurs e-mails de notification, et sont donc sensibles aux changements de catégorie.
J’ignore également comment fonctionnent les paramètres de notification pour les sous-catégories… si j’en crée une, héritera-t-elle de la catégorie parente pour les utilisateurs existants, ou devront-ils s’y abonner séparément ?
Argh !!! Vous devez les retirer du mode liste de diffusion et les faire passer à l’interface utilisateur de Discourse ! Pas facile, je le sais par expérience. Bonne chance.
Les balises d’objet d’e-mail incluront le nom de la catégorie parente, mais cela dépendra de la façon dont ils ont configuré leurs filtres (en particulier s’ils incluent les deux crochets).
C’est un peu complexe : il existe une fonctionnalité d’héritage lors de la configuration des valeurs par défaut de notification, mais je ne l’ai pas expérimentée. Vous pouvez certainement les définir indépendamment si vous le souhaitez.