Customizing trust level promotion messages for new users

Documentation Site Management
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:bookmark: This guide explains how to set up customized trust level promotion messages for new users, replacing the default Discourse narrative bot welcome process.

:person_raising_hand: Required user level: Administrator

Summary

This guide will show you how to customize the onboarding journey for new users by replacing the default Discourse narrative bot welcome process with personalized trust level promotion messages. You’ll learn how to:

  1. Set up the site contact user
  2. Modify the default discobot settings
  3. Customize system messages for different trust levels
  4. Adjust the timing of the onboarding process

Setting up the site contact user

  1. Navigate to your site settings
  2. Find the “site contact username” setting
  3. Change it from the default “system” to your preferred username

For example:

Screenshot showing site contact username setting

After setting the username, customize the user profile with:

  • A suitable avatar
  • Full name
  • Group memberships and flairs
  • Contact options

Here’s an example of a customized site contact user:

Screenshot of a customized site contact user profile
Screenshot of a customized site contact user profile733×184 37.1 KB

Modifying default discobot settings

  1. In your site settings, search for “narrative bot”
  2. Disable the welcome post
  3. Consider disabling public replies

Here are the recommended settings:

Screenshot of narrative bot settings
Screenshot of narrative bot settings658×514 44 KB

Customizing system messages

Discourse sends out messages for each trust level promotion. To customize these:

  1. Go to admin/customize/site_texts
  2. Locate and modify the following variables:
  • Trust Level 1 message:
    • system_messages.welcome_tl1_user.text_body_template
    • system_messages.welcome_tl1_user.subject_template
  • Trust Level 2 message:
    • system_messages.tl2_promotion_message.text_body_template
    • system_messages.tl2_promotion_message.subject_template
  • Trust Level 3 message:
    • lounge_welcome.body
    • lounge_welcome.title

Adjusting the discobot tutorial (optional)

If you want users to still have access to the discobot tutorial:

  1. Mention in the TL1 message that users can trigger the tutorial by replying @discobot start tutorial
  2. Adjust the initial bot message by modifying:
    • discourse_narrative_bot.new_user_narrative.hello.message
    • discourse_narrative_bot.new_user_narrative.hello.title

Timing the onboarding process

To control when new users receive their first message:

  1. In your site settings, find “tl1 requires”
  2. Adjust the settings to your preferred timing

For example:

Screenshot of TL1 requirements settings

Result

After implementing these changes:

  1. New users won’t receive an immediate notification after signing up
  2. The first message they receive will be the TL1 welcome message from your site contact user
  3. The message will have your customized content and come from your configured site contact user

Here’s an example of how it might look:

Screenshot of a custom welcome message notification

Screenshot of a custom welcome message
Screenshot of a custom welcome message775×426 44.8 KB

Last edited by @hugh 2024-07-09T10:26:48Z

Last checked by @hugh 2024-07-09T10:26:57Z

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14 Likes
2

Why do we need to disable the welcome bot? Just so that users will not receive a message from discobot or is it really required in order for the custom contact to work?

1 Like
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You don’t disable the narrative bot with that specific setting. You disable the welcome post being sent by the bot. And yes, that’s sort of necessary if you don’t want to send out welcoming messages twice.

Disabling other bot features is not. If you want the bot to spell out what else it can do, you can always type @discobot display help in a message or post.

1 Like
4

Hmm, do you mean the other welcoming message is the one for TL1? But usually users start from TL0, so they will not receive this message immediately.

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5

Yes, that’s actually one of the two motivations for this set-up:

  • not having a bot welcoming new users
  • not sending out an immediate message that directs users away from your main forum content on signup

I should probably state that in the first post… @team, could this be a wiki post?

I think ideally these considerations wouldn’t be bundled and you could just pick a user that sends all welcoming/onboarding messages (tl0, tl1, tl2).

Another more ideal solution to welcome tl0 - but not direct them away from the main content - could actually be a “tl0 welcoming banner”. That’s a bit fiddly to setup as such… but could be a good use case for a simple component :bulb:

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6

Got it - makes sense now :slight_smile:

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7

How? By setting discourse narrative bot welcome post delay to 0?

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8

When you filter settings for narrative bot then there’s a dedicated setting: disable discourse narrative bot welcome post.

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9

Can we preview the message? Or we can only see it by creating a test user and granting the user trust level to see the customized message?

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10

Yes, at least I’m also only aware of doing it that way. You can preview email templates, but there seems to be no backend option to preview system messages.

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11

Hi @nolo , what happens if I disable the lounge? That category isn’t available for members in my community, so these 2 texts don’t seem to be available for customizing. Does that mean that in my case when a member achieves TL3 he won’t get a welcome message?

12

Do these actually exist? I am unable to find them

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I’m not sure they do. :baymax_no:

I think they were likely removed along with pre-seeding the Lounge category a while back. I think they were the content of the Lounge category’s ‘About’ topic.

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14

What is the difference between titles vs subject_templates? I am leaving them as default for now but am curious when they would be used or seen.