Discobot not greeting new patreon users?

Support
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So, I’ve just launched my site to my patrons. And something that I had enthusiastically promoted to them is the awesome discobot greeting and tutorial. But, for some reason, it doesn’t look like it’s being sent out to my new users.

I’ve disabled email/password login so the only way to log in is with Patreon. I just watched a friend who’s subscribed to my Patreon click the “Sign Up” button, log in with his Patreon credentials, and then get prompted to create a new user on my site. So far, so good.

He did so (changing his name and nickname) and then I was hoping to see the screen darken and for the discobot tutorial to start.

But nothing…

We went to his PM inbox. Nothing there. No “:robot: Greetings!” No PM at all. :frowning:

I checked my Admin settings, and they looked ok:

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My friend had to go, so I went back to my account and tried to trigger discobot for myself with the discobot “start new user” command in a PM and it launched and ran the tutorial for me just fine (after I realized I needed to add a garbage subject to be able to send the PM).

I even tried the advanced tutorial. Loved that.

But none of my new users signing in with Patreon seem to be getting the tutorial. And it’s already a big ask to for them to give a tutorial a try—trying to convince them to run it themselves by creating their own PM or by replying to a topic when they aren’t familiar with Discourse at all is an even bigger ask. Yet, I really think Discobot is a wonderful introduction to Discourse.

Any idea why Discobot might not be launching the tutorial for my Patreon users when they create a new account? When I created an email/password user in testing last week, the tutorial launched just fine…

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Are accounts getting created in some backdoor way? It has to be a regular user signup to get the new user PM.

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Is the Patreon integration considered “backdoor”?

The users click the Sign Up button on my login page

and then they get the Patreon login window as a pop-up. (Or, if they are already signed in to Patreon, they just need to click Allow—pretty slick.)

Is that not a regular user signup?

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I tried Patreon Login on your site, Discobot sends me a greeting PM.

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Hello Chaboi,

Thank you for your response.

You’re one of my Patrons? When you logged in with Patreon, did you get the darkened screen with the focus on the Inbox? And you found the Discobot message in your inbox?

Because when I checked the Discobot account at of 1:00 P.M. today, there were no sent messages at all for the 15 patrons who had created an account. (I then created a special, pinned post with instructions on how to trigger the Discobot, and I know from the Discobot profile that a few folks have taken themselves through the tutorial that way because they used the Subject I suggested “Hello!”.)

I’d love to find out that it’s actually working for my patrons, and that Discobot is automatically sending out the Greetings PM to all of them, but that hasn’t been what I’ve seen from the admin side.

Checking now, I actually do see one Greetings PM from Discobot sent out an hour ago. (It wasn’t responded to, but it is the right Subject: “Greetings!”) It’s the only one that was sent out by Discobot to the 32 patrons who have joined so far.

Was that you? Was there anything you did when you logged in that might have triggered it?

I’d love for there to be a simple solution for this.

Thanks!

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Yes, that’s probably me. I did have a patron account, so I tried testing it.

All I did was click Log-in, and used patreon. I haven’t tried the Sign-up option yet.

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Ah, well, thank you for your support, Chaboi. Cool to see you on here. :slight_smile:

When you say you did have a patron account, does that mean you aren’t a current patron of mine? Can folks who are not my current patrons still create accounts on my site through the Patreon integration? That would be… unexpected.

I wonder if using Log In instead of Sign Up would have a different effect. I’ve been telling folks to use the Sign Up button.

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Ahh yes. In my case, all I needed was a Patreon account. I didn’t matter if you were a Patron of the board or not. :man_shrugging:

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Ah, ok. So you are not currently and have never been one of my Patrons. Discourse is just treating the Patreon login like any other social login. If someone has a Patreon account, even if they aren’t my supporter, if I have Login With Patreon enabled, then they can create an account on my site.

Am I understanding that correctly?

If so, that behavior is quite different than how Patreon integrations work on other platforms (like Crowdcast, Wordpress, Discord, etc.) For those platforms, you have to be my patron specifically to gain access.

It’s not tragic—I think I can still gate certain categories for folks who are currently my patrons by creating groups with pledge dollar limits, but it is not something I had anticipated.

Can I ask if you can currently see one of my Patreon-only categories, the True Fan Lounge? That’s currently open to the “patrons” group, no specific tier limit. Do you have access to that even though you aren’t one of my patrons?

Also, I think you might have diagnosed why you got Discobot and why my current patrons did not. The Patreon integration grabs all my current patrons from the Patreon database, and keeps that list updated. As I understand it, that’s how it recognizes who is one of my patrons and how much they have pledged when they create an account.

@codinghorror Do you think it is possible that since the Patreon integration already grabbed my patrons’ info ahead of time (username, email, etc.), that Discourse doesn’t consider those users “new users” when they sign up? Could that be why @Chaboi_3000, who used the Patreon login but is not one of my patrons, got the Discobot Greetings! PM and why my current patrons who signed up have not gotten it?

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Not sure, maybe @vinothkannans would know.

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@vinothkannans I just checked my logs, saw there was a new Greetings! sent out by my Discobot, and that it was for you. You were able to create an account (even though you aren’t one of my patrons) and so, unlike my patrons, it looks like being a non-patron using the Patreon login triggers the discobot.

I think we might have diagnosed the issue here, but please let me know.

Also, looking at your account on my site, I don’t see that you are part of “patrons” group. (And the account I thought was Chaboi’s turned out not to be, so I’m not sure which one was their account. They might have deleted it immediately after creating it.) It would be a relief to know that the only way you can become part of the “patrons” group on my site is if you are actually one of my patrons. Can you confirm that?

Thanks!

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Discourse will allow anyone to create an account using the Patreon login.

If you want to gatekeep some (or all) the content only to Patrons, you need to create one (or more) categories, and restrict those categories only to patrons.

You can also create different patron groups (eg: one for each reward tier in Patreon) and create different categories for different tiers.

This allow for more flexibility where you can have some public categories to attract people, and restrict some content for your loyal patrons.

One example of this usage is the:

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Thank you, Falco.

While treating Patreon as a general social login is different than how other integrations permit access (and was surprising to me for this reason), gating content on Discourse using groups is how I’ve set things up. (There are public categories, categories for the default “patrons” group, and categories for my patrons who pledge $5+ “patrons_level_5”.)

In addition to getting this discobot issue cleared up, I was wanting to confirm with @vinothkannans that non-patrons logging in with the Patreon integration wouldn’t automatically be added to the “patrons” group—that that was exclusively for my patrons, and my patrons alone.

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Yes, the Patrons groups (and every tier specific group you add in the Patreon plugin settings) will be only for active Patrons, and the system will periodically remove every user that don’t have active pledges.

Regarding Discobot, are you giving a higher trust level to users in one of the Patreon groups? Maybe that is what causes the absence of the automatic welcome message.

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Good. I had hoped and expected that the Patrons group behaved that way. Thank you for confirming that.

And no, I’m not assigning a higher trust level to any of the Patrons groups. I am giving the “Patrons” group immediate access to the Lounge (along with my Level 3 users, but I’m not giving my Patrons Level 3 status or anything).

Could that be causing the Discobot issues with my current Patrons?

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Do you know how often they remove users without active pledges?

Going on nearly two weeks where a user has stopped pledging, but has retained their tier (not a big deal, but would rather it be quicker).

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There is the setting SiteSetting.patreon_declined_pledges_grace_period_days that defaults to 7 days.

So a failed pledge will remove the user from the groups after seven days. Checking your sync is still working and there is nothing in the logs.

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Thank you very much for the prompt response. I appreciate your help!

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Hi @alexwoolfson,

Regarding the discobot PM issue, did you noticed it for more than one user? Did you find anything suspicious in the /logs URL whenever the PM not sent? Since both discobot PM sending and patrons group syncing are running in the same after_commit callback on user create event, it could be possible.

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Howdy @vinothkannans,

Discobot has not sent out an automatic greeting to any of my current patrons (now over 50) who signed up. So, yes, more than one user.

I’m looking through the logs and there isn’t anything suspicious or related to discobot that I see. There are only a few errors since I launched, and none re: after_commit, discobot or problems with PMs. I’d see an error for each new user, yes?

Is there something specific I should look for?

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