Personal message to admin

[gingerman]

@sam @eviltrout @codinghorror Really need your help here

I have a private discourse instance where the private message option is disabled to avoid bullying / trolling among students

College needs an urgent requirement where the students should have a mechanism to reach a group of staffs for any complaints.

Ideally we need a category where the students can post but not see the list of posts. In other words a category with “Create Only” restriction for students group.

Let me explain the ideal usecase flow below

1. Student submits a topic to a specific category eg. “helpdesk”. Students cannot see the list of topics in this category (including his topic).
2. Student can always see his submitted topics/posts through “My Posts” header in the home page.
3. “helpdesk” category is handled by a group of staff members. They can see all the topics. They can reply to it. May be also create topics for staff discussion.
4. Any reply from the staff will reach the specific student who posted the topic. The student can reply back. (refer point 2)

If I think about it, it solves lot many usecases like

• helpdesk for customers in SAAS / any organization
• talk to your CEO / ombudsman kind of scenarios for internal usage in orgs
• for personalized training / q & a among introvert audience.

Please let me know how to proceed in this case. Is this something to be added in the core. Will you implement in short term.

In worst case, what will it take to implement by myself as it is a little urgent need.

[tobiaseigen]

you could set up a private category that only staff can access, but allow anonymous emails to be posted to it. Doesn’t work via the site itself but will work by email.

[gingerman]

Thanks Tobias. That is a good alternative for now.

@sam @eviltrout @codinghorror any possibility to get the feature implemented for posting from the discourse application ?

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

Of course, but its not on our roadmap for the next couple of releases and no paying customers are pushing for it.

[gingerman]

@sam thanks for the update.

[erlend_sh (Erlend Sogge Heggen)]

Two related threads you might be interested in:

Private messages to a group, or other means to handle private support requests

We will be deploying discourse primarily as an open forum for users of our products to discuss features, bugs, usage, etc. Our customers still often need a private channel to discuss certain issues, however. To date, they are all used to emailing ‘support’, where a group of us can respond and stay copied on the conversation. But I’m hoping to steer folks toward the forum where possible to encourage people to use the open resources on the forum. Worst case, we will just end up replying to the…

New category permission : "Create and see"

Hi, I would like to have your opinion about a new permission for categories. I’m building a support platform using Discourse in which users can ask questions and “professional” users can answer. I would like to create a category in which standard users can ask questions but can only be answered by “professional” users. Standard users can see the questions and answers of others but can only create their own topics or answer their own topics. Currently we have “Create, answer, see”, “Answer, s…

[gingerman]

Thanks erlend. Good to see the need being felt by many of the users.

What is the easiest way to make paid customers also feel this need

@lightyear @shivermetimbers @daniel_fernandez_pes @techAPJ having created so many plugins, how difficult is this from a technical standpoint ?

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

I think you should expand on your ideal use case here.

@gingerman

Ideally we need a category where the students can post but not see the list of posts. In other words a category with “Create Only” restriction for students group.

Can they not see the list at all?

Or can they only see topics they have created?

Can you provide a step by step description of how you envision students and staff using this feature?

[gingerman]

@mcwumbly I have updated the original post with the ideal usecase flow.

1. Student submits a topic to a specific category eg. “helpdesk”. Students cannot see the list of topics in this category (including his topic).
2. Student can always see his submitted topics/posts through “My Posts” header in the home page.
3. “helpdesk” category is handled by a group of staff members. They can see all the topics. They can reply to it. May be also create topics for staff discussion.
4. Any reply from the staff will reach the specific student who posted the topic. The student can reply back. (refer point 2)

Let me know if things are not clear.

[Mittineague]

It sounds an awful lot like a Private Message.

Any way they can be enabled as to_staff_only ?

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

I can also see the possible value of separating these tickets into their own category.

But my gut reaction is that it’d be better to allow the students to see all the topics they have created in this category, rather than making them go to a “My Posts” tab.

Don’t you think that would be more straightforward?

That saif, like @Mittineague, I think Private Messages are still a possible solution here worth further consideration, but the group handling may need further thought in that case.

[gingerman]

@Mittineague private messages to staff_only group is one way of achieveing it. I think at present it is not possible to enable to specific groups. It is all or nothing scenario as of now. Even if we can set private messages enabled only for admin & moderators, that is a good start.

@mcwumbly You are right in saying that ideally students should be able to see their submitted topics in that category. If it is technically more feasible, I think we should go in this way. My suggestion for only updating the category is from the perspective of minimal work required to achieve the same effect (utilizing the existing features).

[gingerman]

A College was using this discourse feature ( anonymous emails to a specific category) for posting homeworks/support requests to a specifc category managed by teaching staffs.

Recently they have started getting spam posts to this email id and we have to revoke this feature.

Discourse is adopted in the college with positive feedback. Like I mentioned at the top, they badly need this feature.

This can be achieved by the below feature

Poll: Who needs "create only" category type

Yes I need. No. I dont need. If you think about it, it solves lot many usecases like to contact list of moderators / admins without private message helpdesk for customers in SAAS / any organization talk to your CEO / ombudsman kind of scenarios for internal usage in orgs for personalized training / q & a among introvert audience.

I like to know if this feature will be implemented in the near future. Are there any known problems or side effects of this feature ?

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

Still not on the roadmap