Default email digest frequency

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Default Email Digest Frequency

Users are requesting more flexible options for the default email digest frequency. agf1997 suggests adding “Every other day” or a list of days to select from. nathank would like to see the return of the “every 3 days” option, which was previously available.

nathank mentions that their private forum currently overrides the setting by using a custom “4320” minutes value, which is not a user-friendly solution. agf1997 and pacharanero discuss the possibility of changing the setting via the Rails console, but note that this is not a straightforward process due to validation of input.

Robin.Grant agrees with the need for more options, suggesting that the current daily and weekly options are not suitable. The community is looking for a more flexible solution to customize the default email digest frequency.

Would it be possible to get something between “Weekly” and “Daily” in “Default email digest frequency” setting?
Perhaps “Every other day”

Even better would be a list of days which could selected … e.g.
x Monday
x Tuesday
x Wednesday
x Thursday
Friday
Saturday
x Sunday

6 Likes

I’d love “every 3 days” to make a comeback because it seems to be the sweet spot for our private forums.
(was changed here: Bigger intervals/ lower frequency for activity summary?):

We want this so much that we over-ride the setting and have an ugly “4320” minutes showing on people’s email settings.

Also, it would be nice to be able to turn off the automatic suppression of the summary email that happens when users receive any email from the instance, as per:

5 Likes

That’s interesting … how do you override the minutes? Is there a setting I’m missing?
I have the options :

  • never
  • every 30 mins
  • every hour
  • daily
  • weekly
  • every month
  • every six months

You’ve gotta have some crazy traffic for every 30 mins to be useful … lol

3 Likes

You have to force a change via the Rails console. My fellow admin @pacharanero did this, and he might be able to drop the code required in here as I can’t find it documented anywhere.

2 Likes

I’m not sure it really worked, actually. I changed it (back in 2015, according to our Admin log) on the Rails console using

SiteSetting.default_email_digest_frequency=<DESIRED_EMAIL_DIGEST_FREQUENCY_MINUTES>

Back then, there was no validation of that input. But it seems there is now, and the input of anything that is not in the enum results in

Discourse::InvalidParameters: value
from /var/www/discourse/lib/site_settings/type_supervisor.rb:207:in `validate_value'

That’s probably a good thing in terms of Discourse code quality and stability. But I do get the OP’s point about wanting better options here. The 30 and 60 minutes options seem odd.

2 Likes

I’m in agreement here! - is there any chance of adding a "every 3 days” option for activity summary emails? Daily is too frequent and Weekly is leaving it too long…

3 Likes

Closed in favour of Set "default email digest frequency" to 3-4 days