More Like WhatsApp for addiction support?

[Lee_Davy2 (Lee Davy)]

I use Discourse as a community forum for people trying to stop drinking alcohol. One issue we have as a group is our need to talk to someone quickly when triggered to drink alcohol. We couldn’t find a way for this to work on Discourse, so we created a WhatsApp Group. It works. Someone posts and notifications are immediately received on our mobile device. Pure and simple. However, people are having more conversations on WhatsApp than on the forum, and I have been discouraging this, but then people want Discourse to be more like WhatsApp.

Is there a way for a mobile user to receive notifications of posts that mention their names, private messaging in the way that WhatsApp does?

Lee

[ondrej]

Might this help you.

Babble Chat

Please note that this plugin is no longer maintained and will likely cause problems in its current state: Babble is an simple, lightweight chat plugin for Discourse. It re-skins the existing topic view into a sidebar, allowing for quick conversations in your forum. Note the tag above - Babble has been tagged a “broken-plugin.” [48%20AM] Check out the demo site to see it in action, or view (and contribute to!) the code on Github. If you’d like to help translate Babble to your lan…

[Lee_Davy2 (Lee Davy)]

Thanks, I will check this out.

[maiki]

Idea: use webhooks to ping an external thing.

I often use chat rooms to “listen” to forums, and if I have folks also listening, but I don’t want to discuss it there, I’ll make the chat room ready only. I don’t use What’sApp, but things like XMPP or RocketChat could kinda do that.

But also, maybe having a chat room is more important in this scenario? If your goals are being met.

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

Honestly for this kind of addiction and urgency I think a pure chat app is the way to go. Discourse is hybrid real time for sure, supporting longer and more structured thoughts (power of the paragraph) … but it’s never going to replace a pure real time chat design.

Effectively using Discourse together with group chat

You can certainly do both of these things… it just depends how often the urgency comes up, and that people actually want to write longer stories that are more searchable, etc.

[Lee_Davy2 (Lee Davy)]

Thanks for this.

It’s made me realise that the two different modes of communication are essential to my business. Discourse is the bomb. I need to figure out the best Chat Room to use to supplement what we have.

[Heliosurge (Dan DeMontmorency)]

The Follow plugin can help. And following categories. But agreed a chat ap would give likely quicker notifications if user has it setup.

With Discourse Live Notifications is also good to have on.

I think there might be a plugin to pull posts from things like discord but not sure if memory is faulty.

[Systmyz (Karan)]

I wish there would be a plugin which we can integrate our Discourse with Whatsapp .

[Falco]

How exactly would you envision this integration?

[Lee_Davy2 (Lee Davy)]

@Heliosurge - How do you activate notifications on mobile, please?

[Heliosurge (Dan DeMontmorency)]

There is 2 parts

The above is in Discourse user preferences. If they chose not to they may need to enable in mobile browser?

After adding to home screen (android) may need to use android preferences to ensure notifications.

You want folks to use pings though like @members. An @group might be better. Though notifcations pings may still have delays vs a chat ap.

In Discord some use a bot script to poll posts from topic tags or users. Not sure if whatsapp has that or not.

[merefield (Robert)]

Look at the Babble Plugin for more immediate and almost native and integrated chat capability.

Or as has been suggested go completely chat based. We at Pavilion use Mattermost for chat, which we host ourselves. This is complimentary to our Discourse, not a replacement.

[Lee_Davy2 (Lee Davy)]

Hi @Heliosurge

I have looked through ‘User Preferences’ on my mobile device, but the content of that option isn’t the same as your screenshot. There is nothing for ‘Notifications’, it’s all about email notifications.

[Lee_Davy2 (Lee Davy)]

Hi @merefield

I am interested in trying Babble, but I want someone to integrate it for me. Who does this type of work?

[merefield (Robert)]

Your hosting provider. In order to use a plugin you will need to be on an appropriate level of plan so that may or may not work for you.

[Lee_Davy2 (Lee Davy)]

Discourse is my hosting provider, right?

[merefield (Robert)]

Yup. So drop their support an email.

[Heliosurge (Dan DeMontmorency)]

Strange. Are you on Apple? As I am on Android.

[weallwegot (juicecounty.prodigy)]

@Falco @Systmyz

would it look much different than adding a WhatsApp Provider to this existing Plugin?

Discourse Chat Integration Plugin

Chat Integration is for using an external chat system together with Discourse — you may be looking for Discourse Chat which adds Chat functionality directly to Discourse. Summary Discourse Chat Integration allows you to integrate your chat system of choice with Discourse. Repository Link https://github.com/discourse/discourse-chat-integration Install Guide How to install plugins in Discourse Features discours…

It could help occasionally remind users in the chat there is also a Forum that can serve the needs of less urgent conversations.

[Falco]

WhatsApp has no public API available for us to develop against. Their API is only for medium and large business.

It’s the worst chat platform possible for people wanting to extend or integrate with other software.

Even the more accessible API via Twillio is under beta and has some strings attached. Of course we would accept a community made patch adding support for it, but it’s a hard sell for us to create the integration any time soon.