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.
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.
Is this what you’re after?
Auto-closing is already core.
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.
I pretty much wanted a publish timer and a timer to close the topic automatically…not much more to it.
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.
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?
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.
How about a “wow us Wednesday” subcategory of “anything goes”?
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.
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.
Hi, tried to setup multiple timers for recurring events. Allowing 2 - 3 would be useful!
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:
This is because users like to use emoticons to interact with a topic when they agree / disagree, etc.
That belongs in the event plugin IMO.
Meu caso de uso para isso é para threads de jogos.
Quero lançar a thread BLOQUEADA à meia-noite porque as pessoas começarão a procurá-la em nosso blog de evento de uma semana. Isso eu consigo fazer.
Quero configurá-la para desbloquear às 9h, quando o jogo realmente começar. A única maneira de fazer isso é ficar acordado depois da meia-noite para definir outro timer ou fazê-lo manualmente às 9h.
Outro caso de uso são as threads de sorteio. Eu adoraria enviar os horários de lançamento e encerramento ao mesmo tempo, em vez de esperar o lançamento para definir o horário de término.
Eu adoraria definir dois timers. Posso ver como isso fica um pouco complicado se eles entrarem em conflito, mas talvez limitar os casos de uso ou colocar algumas verificações e saldos.
Obrigado!
Seria útil dividir isso em um RFE específico para posts agendados que se fecham automaticamente?
A solução alternativa de ter uma categoria de fechamento automático faz sentido em geral, mas quero fazer isso para um conjunto específico de conversas como parte de uma discussão estruturada nos próximos meses, e configurar uma categoria separada parece excessivo para isso.
Por que não simplesmente configurá-lo como uma subcategoria separada? Isso não é tão ruim, e você pode configurá-lo de forma que seus usuários provavelmente nem notarão.
Meus usuários prestam muita atenção.
Muitos têm filtros configurados para organizar seus e-mails de notificação e, portanto, são sensíveis a mudanças de categoria.
Também não tenho certeza de como funcionam as configurações de notificação para subcategorias… se eu criar uma, ela herdará da categoria pai para usuários existentes, ou eles terão que se inscrever separadamente?
Ugh!!! Você precisa tirá-los do modo de lista de e-mails e colocá-los na interface do Discourse! Não é fácil, sei por experiência real. Boa sorte.
As tags de assunto do e-mail incluirão o nome da categoria pai, mas dependerá de como eles configuraram seus filtros (particularmente se incluírem ambos os colchetes).
É um pouco complexo - existe uma funcionalidade de herança ao configurar os padrões de notificação, mas eu não mexi com ela. Você definitivamente pode configurá-los independentemente, se desejar.