Include group name or other custom string for support PMs

support
#1

I’d like to change the email subject for support group PMs to make it more obvious to users that they are talking privately with us. (Even better would be a default change like described here: Include group name in group PM email subject by default)

Choices that would work for us:

  • Add a hard-coded string like “[My Company Support]” - if we can avoid including the string for non-support PMs
  • Add the support group full name like “[My Team’s Support Name]” - but what would be the behavior for non-group (person-to-person) PMs? I wouldn’t want “[ ]” to show up in such a case.

Is either of these approaches possible? Other suggestions?

Thanks,
Lisa

2 Likes
#3

The group in subject site setting that might accomplish what you are looking for. When that setting is enabled, the email subject line will, by default, contain the name of the first group in the PM. As an example, here’s the subject line of a PM I sent to my ‘Eurorack’ group to test the setting:

[Simon's Demo] [Eurorack Enthusiasts Club] Testing the subject line for group PMs

The first field in the subject is the name of my site. The second field is the name of the group the message was sent to. The final field is the PMs title. These values are set based on the value of your site’s email subject site setting. The default value of that setting is:

[%{site_name}] %{optional_pm}%{optional_cat}%{topic_title}

That setting’s %{optional_pm} placeholder is what gets set to the group name. If you send a PM to an individual user, with the group in subject setting enabled, that placeholder will be substituted with the text ‘PM’. For example:

[Simon's Demo] [PM] More subject line tests

Let me know if the use of either of these settings is unclear, or if this doesn’t accomplish what you are looking for.

7 Likes
#4

Thank you - that looks like what I need. I’ll let you know how it goes.

1 Like
#5

OK, have things working as we wanted. As I assumed, I also needed to adjust the email templates used for PMs to include %{optional_pm}.

Follow up question: At the time this first came up, it was because users who posted a PM to our support group were seeing subject prefixes in reply email notifications that made them worry their messages weren’t private (“PM” wasn’t obvious enough to them).

However, now when I test with non-support users, their email notification subjects don’t include any prefixes at all - just the message title. Those of us who are members of the support group have the group name etc in the email subjects for the same messages. Can you guess why this might have changed in recent months? We don’t recall making a change that would remove all prefixes from the email subjects for non-support users.

I wasn’t involved in the original discussion with users who were worried about messages appearing non-private. It’s possible people were forwarding notification replies via email without going through Discourse.

Thanks.

#6

Appears email notifications to non-group members for messages that originated via email forwards aren’t getting the prefixes (custom subject lines). Messages created through the Discourse site do result in notifications with the custom subject lines. Is this expected?