Give the admin the option to trigger an Alert when posting a post

Grover

Grover

Well-known member
Digital Doctor posted a really useful idea in this discussion: http://xenforo.com/community/threads/how-do-you-get-your-forum-users-to-read-announcements.7532/ and I took the liberty to re-post it as a feature Suggestion:

Digital Doctor said:
(1) IDEA: Trigger an Alert !
- a modification, that an admin can post an announcement and it would automatically trigger an alert to everyone.
Click to expand...


My ideas on this:

Since XenForo doesn't and (thankfully, because it is not needed) will not offer an Announcement system (like vBulletin), this idea of Digital Doctor could be implemented just on the post-level, only available (obviously) to admins (and maybe mods). So, when you as an admin posts something in your dedicated 'Announcements'-forum and you want to get this Announcement really the attention it needs/deserves, then it would be really great to be able to check an additional checkbox like this:

Options: [ ] Watch this thread...
------------[ ] and receive email notifications
----------[x] Send Alert to everyone

So, when you then press [Create Thread], an Alert (we don't need a 'special alert' IMHO, just make use of the great stock XF functionality that is already available) is send to every member, giving you full community attention on your important 'Announcement'.


Please do [like] this first posting if you think it is a good feature suggestion for XenForo
 
Upvote 96
I'm on the fence on this one.;)
Gover has 12 likes on this on November 03, 2010 at 12:24
I bet if I posted it - I'd have 1/2 that.
I think it's his nice smile.

Would people want the option for a "MUST READ" alert ?
xenforo-must-read-popup-jpg.5478

:)
 
I do not think it can completely replace announcements at the top of the thread-list. Alerts are temporary and announcements keep reminding visitors of something. But I like this idea nonetheless.

Admins would have to use this sparely though, you can't force these things on users too often. Maybe give the user the option to disable too.
 
Thinking about something here...what if you had regular alerts along with the announcement alert? How would that work? Perhaps the announcement alert could show in a different color and bump up the alerts number by one (i.e. if the only alert is the announcement, it's a blue "1," but say if there are two other alerts, then it's a blue "3"). Just a thought; I really like this idea. :)
 
It doesn't even have to say "Must read" just an alert is good enough, because people are most likely going to check that.
 
Darfuria said:
It doesn't even have to say "Must read" just an alert is good enough, because people are most likely going to check that.
Click to expand...
Disagree.... as alerts by themselves have a timeout functionality on how long they are kept... if I have the options correctly within my mind.

I think it should say announcement, and just remain active unique of the alert timeouts and such, until the user has read it, or an option on the ACP to select between must read vs. cookie based... or something along those lines.

This feature though is awesome... an absolute must have in the Gold product IMHO.
 
I agree on leaving it as "Alert," since most people seem to tune out "must read" or "important announcement" or anything that smacks of, "this will be dull, long-winded information you don't care about."

The problem with announcements has never been, "make people notice them," it's been "make people care." People avoid them for the same reason that they avoid reading an instruction manual, or asking for directions if they're lost. What that reason is I don't know, but that's why none of the systems work. You aren't up against a software problem, you're up against human nature.
 
anotheralias said:
I agree on leaving it as "Alert," since most people seem to tune out "must read" or "important announcement" or anything that smacks of, "this will be dull, long-winded information you don't care about."

The problem with announcements has never been, "make people notice them," it's been "make people care." People avoid them for the same reason that they avoid reading an instruction manual, or asking for directions if they're lost. What that reason is I don't know, but that's why none of the systems work. You aren't up against a software problem, you're up against human nature.
Click to expand...

Amen. I fully agree with everything you say.
 
Before I read the first post this is exactly how I envisioned it to be described in the first post. Nice idea, good suggestion and a beneficial feature if you ask me I would like to see. Perhaps being an important announcement the colouring of the alert could be different from the standard red and maybe take priority asthe one that shows with a kind of weighting system being deployed so that this alert takes priority over other alerts.
 
I don't care how it would be implemented, i just like the idea period.. Ive never used vB announcements. I have an announcements forum, and adding the ability to effectively draw extra attention to specific content within that forum would be far better then vB's solution.
 
i would love something like this.
my superadmin account rarely posts, and when it does it would be great if people were alerted to that.
 
The only reason we haven't already done it is that it potentially adds millions of rows to the alerts table in a single hit, whereas normal alerts tend to only insert records for active users. If you insert alerts for users who never log in, they will never be cleared from the alerts table, and your performance will suffer.
 

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