# Group messaging does not work?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/group-messaging-does-not-work/186956
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [April 15, 2021, 1:33pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/group-messaging-does-not-work/186956 "2021-04-15T13:33:33Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@vagosduke](https://meta.discourse.org/u/vagosduke)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2021, 1:33pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/group-messaging-does-not-work/186956/1 "2021-04-15T13:33:33Z")
Hello, I’ve been trying to message groups. I edited all required settings per group (allow to message and allow to mention is set to admin and mods)
However, sending the same exact message to group trust\_level\_0 fails with 502, while sending to, say, trust\_level\_3 succeeds!
the production.log does not look very helpful either. These are the log for the last 2 tries.
(
what’s wrong?
Thanks for your help!
edit: trust\_level\_1 fails as well
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### Author:  [@tobiaseigen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tobiaseigen)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2021, 2:57pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/group-messaging-does-not-work/186956/2 "2021-04-15T14:57:32Z")
Maybe a silly question.. but why would you PM all users on your site? Why not just post to the forum?
Can you confirm that writing a message to another group (not a system created group) does work?
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### Author:  [@vagosduke](https://meta.discourse.org/u/vagosduke)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2021, 4:41pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/group-messaging-does-not-work/186956/3 "2021-04-15T16:41:46Z")
Yes, writing messages to another custom group works fine. It also works for trust\_level\_2 and trust\_level\_3. But unfortunately there is only a 503 error for trust\_level\_0 and trust\_level\_1. Is there a setting preventing sending messages to these groups?
I want to message the users about promotional stuff and it imperative that they receive a notification about these posts (on the upper right corner). I am not sure if there is a simpler way to do that. Making a forum post does not guarantee a notification delivery unless the user is mentioned.
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### Author:  [@tobiaseigen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tobiaseigen)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2021, 4:44pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/group-messaging-does-not-work/186956/4 "2021-04-15T16:44:08Z")
Discourse is not really a mass mailing tool for sending “promotional stuff”. You want to use mailchimp or some other newsletter sending tool for this purpose. The admin user list has an export link so you can easily get the most current user list on a regular basis and then invite them to subscribe to your mailchimp.
One approach you can take is to create a category for announcements. Then in the user preferences admin settings you can add this category to the “default categories watching” setting. That way people will be notified whenever you post an announcement.
I don’t know why the error message is so cryptic. Someone more familiar with this can respond.
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### Author:  [@vagosduke](https://meta.discourse.org/u/vagosduke)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2021, 4:45pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/group-messaging-does-not-work/186956/5 "2021-04-15T16:45:45Z")
Yes, I know that. I am not the one making the requirements though.
So the question is “can it be done?”, and if yes, how do I fix the error?
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### Author:  [@vagosduke](https://meta.discourse.org/u/vagosduke)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2021, 4:51pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/group-messaging-does-not-work/186956/6 "2021-04-15T16:51:38Z")
> [@tobiaseigen](#):
>
> One approach you can take is to create a category for announcements. Then in the user preferences admin settings you can add this category to the “default categories watching” setting. That way people will be notified whenever you post an announcement.
This might actually work. thanks!
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### Author:  [@vagosduke](https://meta.discourse.org/u/vagosduke)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2021, 6:37am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/group-messaging-does-not-work/186956/7 "2021-04-20T06:37:39Z")
I’m bumping this again because I’d really want to know why group messages do not work for certain groups and if we should open a bug report for Discourse (unless it is intended behaviour)
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### Author:  [@Mark\_Schmucker](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mark_Schmucker)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2021, 7:31am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/group-messaging-does-not-work/186956/8 "2021-04-20T07:31:47Z")
I message TL0 occasionally- worked for me as recently as 5 days ago. For the group settings I have “who can message this group” set to “only admins”.
I use it for ephemeral messages like service outages that are not critical and I don’t want to persist forever. But the Announcements category is a good idea.
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### Author:  [@vagosduke](https://meta.discourse.org/u/vagosduke)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2021, 12:20pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/group-messaging-does-not-work/186956/9 "2021-04-21T12:20:38Z")
@Mark_Schmucker how many users are in TL0?
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### Author:  [@Mark\_Schmucker](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mark_Schmucker)
#### Post date: [April 23, 2021, 10:47pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/group-messaging-does-not-work/186956/10 "2021-04-23T22:47:22Z")
We have close to 2000.
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [May 23, 2021, 10:47pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/group-messaging-does-not-work/186956/11 "2021-05-23T22:47:44Z")
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