Reply vs Reply All

[Coleen_Astalos]

Is there a way to set up whether a reply (via email) to a post goes back to the forum versus back to the original poster?

I want a "reply" to go to the email address of the original poster, but a "reply all" to be posted back to the forum - which will then get distributed to all members who subscribe to that forum category.

If not, can you explain how it currently works and whether it makes a difference whether the original post was made on the website or whether the original post was made via email to the forum.  

Thanks,
Coleen

[GregChapman]

Coleen_Astalos wrote

Is there a way to set up whether a reply (via email) to a post goes back to the forum versus back to the original poster?

No!

Unfortunately, (from your point of view) there is no difference between the forum and the original poster. That's because any email that arrives at Nabble is intercepted and converted to a forum post and the email discarded. Then, if you have a subscription, Nabble generates an email copy of that post for you. That is why the forum itself is the original poster!

As far as I know even conventional mail list software would not be able to do what you request. All packages that I know only allow the list manager to set either "Reply to author" or "Reply to Subscribers", not both as that would always send two copies to the original poster - definitely undesirable!.

However, there is a work around. Read on...

I want a "reply" to go to the email address of the original poster, but a "reply all" to be posted back to the forum - which will then get distributed to all members who subscribe to that forum category.

If you want to send a reply to the original poster you must visit the forum and click on the poster's avatar/username. That will take you to a page that will allow you to post an email to the author.

This is easy to do as there is a link in the footer of any subscription email:
"If you reply to this email, your message will be added to the discussion below:"
Click on that and you will be taken to the post in question.

Obviously, a simple "Reply" to a subscription email, will provide the "Reply to All" that you want - but even that is subject to a caveat. Nabble is primarily a forum. It is up to individual users to opt to receive emails. You cannot assume that a post you make to the forum will be received as an email by all other users. Most users will be visiting the forum itself to read any post, whether made by email or direct to the forum.

[Coleen_Astalos]

Humm... This may be a deal breaker for me.  

I'm looking at Nabble as a replacement for a very active Yahoogroup with thousands of members.  Most of our users interact with the group via email (instead of using the Yahoogroups website).   In our Yahoogroup we have it set up so that a reply (to the email copy of the post) goes to the individual (ie. the author of the post they are responding to).  But if they do a Reply-All, it goes to both the original poster and the yahoogroup list (thus is posted on the yahoogroup site as well).

Yes, that does mean that the original poster gets two copies (the direct reply and a copy distributed thru the yahoogroup).  

I also understand that with Nabble - only those those that subscribed to the category would get the post, not ALL users (that's perfect).

But what I'm trying to avoid is all users subscribed to the category getting all the responses - most of which are not pertainent to them.

Here is an example:
1) Sally posts a cool idea to the Creative Category.  
2) Lisa sends a "reply" email that says, "That's cool, thanks for sharing" (She uses Reply as she wants it to go to Sally as it's not pertainent to the rest of the group).  
3) Jane sends a "reply" email that says, "Gee, I should try that" (again, reply goes to just Sally).
4) Nancy responds using Reply-All with another idea to expand the cool idea further.  This is pertainent to the whole group and so it goes to Sally AND back to the forum - which then causes to the people who are following the Creative Category to all get a copy.
5) Five more people then respond with "Reply" to Nancy with a note saying "What a great expansion idea".

So in my scenario, most members (those subscribed to the creative category) only get 2 emails (the original post and Nancy's expansion idea) - and that's also what shows online in the creative category form.  But what I'm hearing is if we use Nabble, then everyone subscribed to the category would get all 9 emails - ugh (and they'd all be on the forum as well).

It's taken a long time to train my users on when to use Reply and when to use Reply-All.  And we generate a lot of traffic every day.  I'm worried the email traffic will EXPLODE exponentially if every reply automatically goes back to the nabble category & thus is distributed to all members subscribed to that category.  Which will result in a lot of complaints from my email users.

Is there ANY way to customize this?  (If the answer is Yes, I'll gladly pay for Premium support to get it done.  But if the answer is No, I'm going to have to think hard about whether Nabble is the way I want to go to replace Yahoogroups).

Thanks,
Coleen

 

[GregChapman]

Ah! It's a long time since I ran a YahooGroup and I never used the "Reply to Author" feature. Thanks to your description I now see that all it would take to create the facility you describe is to have a "Reply to Author" option added to Nabble's subscription service with a secondary option of adding a Cc: to the forum.

I think that feature would be a very useful addition to Nabble's facilities, especially when there is so much dissatisfaction with "neo-YahooGroups". You could say an opportunity not to be missed!

With that in mind, it is quite possible that Nabble would see sense in publishing details of the changes in NAML code needed to do that - and I would have thought most definitely achievable with "Premium Support".

We can only wait for a response from the Nabble team!

[Pedro]

Coleen_Astalos wrote

So in my scenario, most members (those subscribed to the creative category) only get 2 emails (the original post and Nancy's expansion idea) - and that's also what shows online in the creative category form.  But what I'm hearing is if we use Nabble, then everyone subscribed to the category would get all 9 emails - ugh (and they'd all be on the forum as well).

Should these personal messages also appear in the nabble forum? I mean, if some visits your web forum/archive, would he see 2 or 9 posts?

[Coleen_Astalos]

On the forum they'd only see the 2.

-Coleen

 

Coleen Astalos, Stampin' Up! Demonstrator
Alamosa, CO, [hidden email]
See my website at http://alamosa.stampinup.net
Are you a demonstrator? Join me on SUDSOL - Your 24/7 Upline!

 

From: Pedro <Nabble> [via Nabble Support] [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2013 10:03 PM
To: Coleen_Astalos
Subject: Re: Reply vs Reply All

 

Coleen_Astalos wrote

So in my scenario, most members (those subscribed to the creative category) only get 2 emails (the original post and Nancy's expansion idea) - and that's also what shows online in the creative category form.  But what I'm hearing is if we use Nabble, then everyone subscribed to the category would get all 9 emails - ugh (and they'd all be on the forum as well).

Should these personal messages also appear in the nabble forum? I mean, if some visits your web forum/archive, would he see 2 or 9 posts?

---

If you reply to this email, your message will be added to the discussion below:

http://support.nabble.com/Reply-vs-Reply-All-tp7586689p7586759.html

To unsubscribe from Reply vs Reply All, click here.
NAML

[Coleen_Astalos]

In looking at the headers for my Yahoogroup emails (that work the way I want it with the Reply vs Reply-al).  I see this:

From: email address of the person who submitted the post
Sender: [e-mail] (which is the name of my yahoogroup) - this should be the nabble category/post address.

In looking at the macro: send_subscription_email
it looks like this could easily be achieved by setting those fields in the email.  

What I don't know is 1) how to reference the email address of the person who made the post and 2) whether there is a field for sender & sender name defined that can be set here.

I'm still unable to access the paid support section for the premium support I paid for yesterday...
Coleen

[Pedro]

I really tried hard to implement this. But it is not possible in naml.

[Coleen_Astalos]

Can you share what the difficulty is?
Did you try setting the sender being the nabble email address and the From being the poster?
Not having this capability may be key in whether we adopt nabble or not.
Thanks
Coleen

Coleen Astalos
[hidden email]

[Pedro]

It works like this:
1 - someone post something.
2 - the system goes to each subscribe and send an email structured with:
        from: receiver nabble's reply link
        to: receiver email address
In this way, when the receiver clicks on "Reply", it makes the reply goes to his nabble's reply link, in other words, goes to the forum.

So, I tried to edit implementing this structure:
1 - someone post something.
2 - the system goes to each subscribe and send an email structured with:
        from: author's email address
        cc: receiver nabble's reply link
        to: receiver email address

In this way, when you receive the post and click "Replay", it goes to the author. Clicking on "Reply to All", goes to the author and to the forum. It works and fits your needs.
In the other hand, It brings a lot of bugs such as "Mail delivery failure", eventually duplicated posts, etc.

[Coleen_Astalos]

Sounds like it might work.  Is there a place I can test it out (or can you make the change to my forum and let me test it there)?
Thanks,
Coleen

[Coleen_Astalos]

Just checking on this.  It sounds like you have a solution.  I'd like to test it out to see how it works for me.  How do I make the mod?
Coleen

[Pedro]

It didn't work because it generates a lot of duplicates and Delivery Failures.
I have another idea, we send the authors email in the "from" field and at the email footer we explain something like this:
-If you want to "reply to all", send your reply to the forum, please, add this address to your message.
And we give the nabble reply address.

What do you think?

[Coleen_Astalos]

Yes, let's try that.
Coleen

[Pedro]

Please, try this:

<override_macro name="send_subscription_email" parameters="node_attr,text_part,html_part" requires="subscription">
    <n.set_local_subscription.this_subscription/>
    <n.set_local_node.node_attr/>
    <n.block.>
        <n.new_email.>
            <n.send>
                <to.local_subscription.user.user_email/>
                <to_name.local_subscription.user.name/>
                <from.local_node.owner.user_email/>
                <from_name><n.local_node.owner.name/> [via <n.root_node.subject/> - <n.local_node.get_app_node.subject/>]</from_name>
                <subject.local_node.subject/>
                <text_part.text_part/>
                <html_part.html_part/>
                <set_headers_for.local_node/>
                <bounce_to.local_subscription.user.bounces_address/>
            </n.send>
        </n.new_email.>
    </n.block.>
</override_macro>

<override_macro name="instant_html" requires="subscription,node_page">
    <n.set_local_subscription.this_subscription/>
    <n.if.page_node.is_app>
        <then>
            <t><t.username.page_node.owner.name/> created a new subcategory</t>:
            <b><n.page_node.subject/></b><br/><br/>
        </then>
    </n.if.page_node.is_app>

    <n.page_node.html_email_message_with_signature/>
    <br/>
    <br/>
    <hr noshade="noshade" size="1" color="#cccccc" />
    <div style="color:#444; font: 12px tahoma,geneva,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">
        <div style="font-weight:bold"><t>If you want this meassage added to the discussion below</t>:</div>
        <a href="[n.page_node.url/]"><n.page_node.url/></a>,
        <div style="font-weight:bold"><t>please, reply this email to this address</t>: <n.local_subscription.user.reply_address_for.page_node/></div>
    </div>
    <div style="color:#666; font: 11px tahoma,geneva,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;margin-top:.4em;line-height:1.5em">
        <n.start_new_topic_line append="[br/]"/>
        <n.unsubscribe_line format="html"/><br/>
        <n.macro_viewer_email_link macro="instant_html"/>
    </div>
</override_macro>


<override_macro name="instant_text" requires="subscription,node_page" unindent="true">
    <n.set_local_subscription.this_subscription/>
    <n.if.page_node.is_app>
        <then>
            <t><t.username.page_node.owner.name/> created a new subcategory</t>:
            <n.page_node.subject/>
        </then>
    </n.if.page_node.is_app>

    <n.page_node.text_email_message_with_signature />
    _______________________________________________
   <t>If you want this meassage added to the discussion below</t>:
    <n.page_node.url/>, <t>please, reply this email to this address</t>: <n.local_subscription.user.reply_address_for.page_node/>
    
    <n.start_new_topic_line/>
    <n.unsubscribe_line format="text"/>
</override_macro>

Note that, if you want to answer to the forum, the email should has the same subject of the original message.

[Coleen_Astalos]

Thanks.  That seems to work.
Coleen