Enable external email to be sent to pre-defined admin/moderator groups.
There is a recommended workaround to send external emails to admins/moderators:
- Create groups admin_messaging, with the same list of users as in the group admin (yes, double administration here!)
- Configure this group to accept incoming emails
- Create external mailbox/use external mail system to forward emails to the configured group email address
However, this still presents admins/moderators with additional mailboxes to monitor.
Rationale:
If user/new user cannot login into our gated Discourse platform, they need a means to contact site admins. We want to display external admin email on different dialogs (when user cannot login, or is suspended, etc.). That is the only means for users in trouble to contact site admins from the outside world. We estimate this to be a seldom occurrence. However, the attention of admins would be focused on the messages in admins group, so they might overlook these messages in admins_mesaging that are in fact a bit urgent.
Considering we have setup external shared mailbox with our branding and forwarding to admins_messaging, we can use that external mailbox to somehow alert admins, but this is a solution outside of Discourse platform and it is not exactly elegant…