Configuring Activity Summary emails

[Discourse]

This guide explains how to configure and manage activity summary emails in Discourse, including user and admin options, customization, and troubleshooting.

Required user level: Administrator

Activity summary emails (formerly known as digest emails) are automated messages sent to forum members who haven’t visited in a specific period. These emails contain a collection of popular content since the user’s last visit, aiming to re-engage inactive members.

Understanding activity summary emails

Activity summary emails include:

1. Activity statistics to emphasize engagement levels
2. A list of popular topics
3. A selection of popular posts
4. Links to topics that are “New for you”

Here’s an example of what an activity summary email looks like:

The system sends these emails only when a member hasn’t visited the forum for a minimum period.

Configuring user options

Users can customize their activity summary email preferences:

1. Go to user preferences
2. Navigate to the “Emails” tab
3. Adjust the “Activity Summary” frequency

Available frequency options are:

• Never
• Every 30 minutes
• Every hour
• Daily
• Weekly
• Every month
• Every six months

The system won’t send activity summaries to silenced or suspended members.

Setting up admin options

Default user settings

To configure default settings for new users:

1. Go to Admin / Settings
2. Search for “digest”
3. Adjust the following settings:
   • default email digest frequency
   • default include tl0 in digests

Here’s what these settings look like in the admin panel:

Site settings

To customize activity summary emails:

1. Go to Admin / Settings
2. Search for “digest”
3. Modify the following settings as needed:
   • digest logo
   • digest min excerpt length
   • digest topics
   • digest posts
   • digest other topics
   • suppress digest email after days
   • digest suppress categories
   • digest suppress tags
   • show topic featured link in digest
   • disable digest emails

Customizing email appearance

To customize the email’s appearance:

1. Go to Admin / Settings
2. Adjust the following settings:
   • email accent bg color
   • email accent fg color

For more advanced customization, refer to the guide on customizing email templates.

Adding custom content

To add custom text to activity summary emails:

1. Go to Admin / Customize / Site Texts
2. Search for user_notifications.digest.custom
3. Edit the desired customization keys

Understanding the list of popular topics

Popular topics for digests are extracted from /top topics with certain rules:

• individual user permissions to view that topic
  • topics from private categories the user does not have access to will not be sent
• topic notification level
  • the topic shouldn’t be muted for that user
• user who created that topic must have trust level greater than 0
  • this default can be overridden (see below)
• topic must be created after the user was last seen or last sent a digest (whichever is more recent)
• topic should not be from a muted category
• topic should not be closed
• topic should not be archived

Testing activity summary emails

To preview an activity summary email:

1. Go to Admin / Emails
2. Click on “Preview Summary”
3. Set the Last Seen User date
4. Enter a username to use for the summary email.
5. Choose to view on-site or send to an email address

Here’s what the preview option looks like in the admin panel:

Note that for the summary email to populate, it will need to contain at least some activity since the last seen user date, so you may need to set this date back several weeks if your site does not have a lot of activity.

Troubleshooting

A user might not receive activity summary emails if:

• They have been active on the site recently
• They have unsubscribed from activity summary emails
• A summary has been sent recently
• Their email has been bouncing
• They’re inactive, suspended, or staged
• They were created via DiscourseConnect and have never visited the forum

Checking email sending dates

To check when an email was last sent to a user:

• Check the last_emailed_at column in the users table
• Check the digest_attempted_at column in the user_stats table

Frequently asked questions

Is there a place to see statistics or a report of the amount of e-mails sent?

You can see the list of sent emails from your site’s Admin / Emails / Sent page. You can see the total number of emails sent per day with the Emails Sent dashboard report (found by clicking the Reports link from your admin dashboard.)

For a detailed report of emails sent per type of email, you can query the email_logs table with the Data Explorer plugin.

For self hosted sites, you can also usually see reports at your transactional mail provider, which will also include delivery status, bounces, etc.

What are the technical requirements and the costs associated with sending email to forum members?

For self hosted sites, an account with a transactional email provider like Sendgrid needed. Take a look at the email provider recommendations.

Email delivery is included with all of our hosting plans. If you go with our hosting, everything to do with sending and receiving emails on your Discourse site is configured for you.

Additional resources

• Managing Activity Summary email subscriptions
• Customizing the Discourse outer email template
• Adding custom content to summary emails

Last edited by @SaraDev 2025-06-11T20:46:13Z

Last checked by @hugh 2024-08-02T04:11:44Z

Check document

Perform check on document:

[bayardo.rivas]

몇 가지 카테고리를 설정했고, 해당 카테고리에 대한 권한이 부여된 그룹을 하나 만들었습니다. 이제 이 그룹의 멤버들이 이 특정 카테고리에서의 활동(게시물/답글)에 대해서만 알림과 메일 다이제스트/요약을 받기를 원합니다. 현재는 다른 카테고리에서의 활동에 대한 알림도 함께 받고 있습니다.

조언을 주시면 감사하겠습니다.

[Moin]

@Discourse

시스템은 회원이 포럼을 방문하지 않았거나 포럼에서 이메일을 받지 않은 기간이 최소 기간을 충족할 때만 이러한 이메일을 전송합니다.

Activity Summary not sent if other emails are sent - #25 by zogstrip 에서 이 부분이 변경된 것 같습니다.

@Discourse

사용자 정의 콘텐츠 추가

활동 요약 이메일에 사용자 정의 텍스트를 추가하려면:

1. 관리자 / 사용자 정의 / 텍스트 콘텐츠로 이동합니다.

이 안내문은 /admin/customize/site_texts로 이동하는 데 도움이 되지 않습니다. "텍스트 콘텐츠"는 URL에도, 관리자 사이드바에도, 구형 관리자 메뉴에도 존재하지 않는 것 같습니다.

[bayardo.rivas]

아직도 Activity Summary 이메일을 어떻게 설정해야 하는지 이해가 되지 않습니다. 그룹별로 사용자에게 이메일을 보내고 싶습니다. 예를 들어, Category-A와 Category-B가 있고, 각각의 카테고리에 권한이 부여된 GroupA와 GroupB가 있다고 가정해 보겠습니다. 제가 원하는 이상적인 이메일 요약은 GroupA의 사용자는 Category-A의 활동과 게시물에 대한 요약만 받고, GroupB의 사용자도 마찬가지로 Category-B에 대한 요약만 받는 것입니다.

[tobiaseigen]

@bayardo.rivas

제 이상적인 이메일 요약은 GroupA의 사용자가 Category-A의 활동과 게시물에 대해서만 요약을 받고, GroupB의 사용자도 마찬가지라는 것입니다.

귀하의 사이트에서는 이것이 일어나지 않는 건가요? 이 내용과 다르게 보이는 건가요?

[ToddZ]

@Moin

@Discourse

시스템은 회원이 최소 기간 동안 포럼을 방문하지 않았거나 포럼에서 이메일을 받지 않은 경우에만 이러한 이메일을 보냅니다.

이 내용은 Activity Summary not sent if other emails are sent - #25 by zogstrip에서 변경된 것으로 생각됩니다.

네, 그 부분은 업데이트되어야 합니다. "알림을 받는 것은 활동 요약 이메일을 받는 것을 방해하는 방문으로 간주되지 않아야 한다"는 데 합의가 이루어졌으며, 이를 해결하기 위한 수정 사항이 구현되었기 때문입니다.

[tknospdr (David Muszynski)]

여기서 좀 명확한 답변을 듣고 싶습니다.
사이트에서 요약 미리보기를 보려면 사용자를 입력해야 하므로, Discourse는 이미 해당 카테고리에 접근 권한이 없는 사용자에게 그 카테고리의 주제를 보내지 않도록 충분히 지능적으로 작동하고 있다고 추측하는데, 맞나요?

즉, ‘Digest suppress categories’ 설정에 카테고리를 추가하는 이유는, 해당 카테고리의 주제를 아무에게도 보내지 않기를 원할 때뿐이라는 뜻인가요?