Continuing from How to set up automation on Discourse to get welcome messages sent after some specific period of time :
This seems to be a solution to something I need to do! Ours is a support group and we have an onboarding process which « pings » users at set intervals after their arrival. So it seems I should be able to do this with private messages through automation.
Any caveats, risks, problems? Would love testimonials.
Hope you don’t mind! I liked this post so thought I’d pull it out into a new topic here in Community, so we can share about our experiences.
Since writing the post, did you do any experimenting with using automation to send messages automatically to your members?
I am considering setting up similar messages here on meta, to help guide new members as they join. Currently we have nothing special set up at all and just rely on the default messages that are sent as members join and move up in trust level.
Which messages are currently being sent? What exactly is “default”? When I registered here in 2021, after registering, I received a message from Discobot explaining the trust levels and offering a tutorial. Then I received the TL1 and TL2 messages
And the invitation for the advanced user tutorial.
But on my forum the first message from Discobot which explains trust levels and what is needed to get rid of those limitations is no longer sent because a Discourse update about a month ago silently disabled the Disable Discourse Narrative Bot welcome post without telling me.
Since you say you rely on default messages that are sent when members join which message do you mean? Discobot seems no longer to be default.
This is what still occurs here on meta. I am interested in changing it or adding to it, but have not yet decided on the changes.
I knew this was changed for new sites but was not aware it changed existing sites. If this is an issue for you I would start a topic in Support.
What should be the outcome of such a support topic, other than that the solution is to deactivate the setting again?
I decided against changing them. I cannot provide customisations in every language, and I did not like the idea of customising messages only for users who use my forum in certain languages and excluding everyone else from this additional information.
Yes, for this reason I have generally always been in favor of not changing from the defaults as well. I wonder if on sites like meta where we are using the new automatic translation whether that problem is now less of an issue. The PM will be generated in english but then can be translated if you are viewing the site in a different language.
I just checked with a different automation and see it was not translated. I think we have disabled the translation of PMs. @nat can confirm. If so, maybe a separate setting might be handy to still translate automated PMs.
This is a site setting, see docs.
I was talking about modifying the default messages. In that case, the fact that pm can be translated by AI doesn’t help. Based on my interface language, the German translation from server.de.yml of the message would be sent to me. AI would detect that as German and no translation will happen.
It’s like when you customize site texts. An example is the meta branded theme where the English texts of the search banner were changed. English-speaking users are welcomed specially to the Discourse community. While users who prefer other languages are only welcomed in general. Therefore, it seems necessary to tell them that they should search first. The fact that you only point this out to foreign-language users creates an impression that may not be intended.
Customizing text (including templates for messages) means either a lot of work to edit all translations and somehow monitor when languages are added, or deciding you don’t care that you exclude certain users from your improvements. And I think most admins miss this and therefore unintentionally do the latter. You even show some hints for hosted customers on your hosted forums only for those who use their forum in English. So I guess it’s not fair to blame admins for missing this
I hear what you are saying!
I definitely agree we should aim for a world where the default texts do not need to be modified. If people want to heavily customize the experience, they should turn off the default messages instead of modifying them. In most cases they can be left alone.
Whether or not the default messages are enabled, we can use automation to send additional messages to members as they sign up and start to spend more time. Those can be translated automatically, if PM translation is not turned off - thanks @nat!
I am interested in learning from others what they have done in this department to help wtih onboarding their new members and encouraging the kind of engagement that they want to see.
I have decided to turn off the discobot messages here on meta. So for now there are no messages for new members. Upon logging in for the first time, they are taken to the TOP page which has the welcome topic pinned to the top. They can then read that or choose their own adventure to jump into community discussions.
I think if you are going to create more messages through automation you might also want to turn these off too, to avoid inundating your new members with calls to action.
I will leave meta like this for a while before making further changes, but am interested in setting up an automated message, from my account, to be sent after a day or so to personally welcome members to the community.
