Reply by Email

[Cory Booth]

Many "bug" tracking applications use it...
Would it be possible to implement a "Reply by Email" so users could actually just hit reply to a froum email and have it added to the forum as a post? I know the arguments - it would drive down traffic - but.... I would truly pay top dime for a forum encorporating this feature... (goes back to Mobile/WAP support as well)....

 

[Dean]

Let me put forth a practical application...
I just now came back from a boating trip down the ICW.

Specific examples are fantastic

I don't know about your specific suggestion, but would love to hear about your trip in the offtopic forum, I've always wanted to travel the ICW.

(ICW = the intercoastal waterway in the USA I *think* LINK)

 

[Grover]

Reply on a PM notification

Well... the only reasons (I can think of now) why I would like my members to reply by email is that -more often than I like- they reply to PM notifications in their email now. Even when it says in BIG words : 'DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL!' . When they reply by email to a PM notification not only does the original sender of that PM not receive any answer... the email (with private stuff in it) is also send to the webmaster's email address! Grrrr.

And I mean... isn't it logical and totally understandable that my members reply to a PM notification by email... if this notification contains all the contents of this PM?! Because it does in vBulletin... I mean wouldn't it prevent people to reply to PM notifications in the first place if those notifications did not contain any of the contents (forcing you to go to the site/PM box actually)? But that's another discussion...

 

[Biker]

Something like this would be appreciated by those that can access email at work, but for one reason or another, the site itself is blocked by corporate proxies and firewalls.

 

[feldon30]

Absolutely gets my support. I realize then that XenForo will need to be able to listen to mail. Outgoing e-mails from your XF forum regarding Conversations (PMs) or Posts (Forums) would be sent from a special e-mail address that you set up for XF. It would have autoresponders and helpful messages. And it would handle replying to PMs automatically.

Outgoing e-mails will need to include a hashed token which, if the user deletes, they will immediately get a response from the forum:

Your message to the xxxxx Forum, could not be delivered because the Forum Token is missing. Please try again, making sure not to remove the token. An example forum token looks like 8fxxxxxxxx.

This feature would make XenForo the first forum software that is an acceptable migration for Yahoo! Groups.

 

[gordy]

+1 Much desired ~

 

[Jeffin]

Wow, I love this suggestion!!! I've thought about it before but I thought it wont be possible.
This one and central registration gets my vote.

 

[Dean]

So this is the desired operation?

People are emailed PC notifications:

• Members could email a reply with an answer, or
• the automated "i am out of the office until the 14th, I will respond to all emails then. <insert extremely long automated legal disclaimer about how only the intended recipient should be viewing this email, and please delete if you are not that person> <insert extremely long vcard of how to reach the person, their real name, their title in the corporation, their company contact information, etc>

And the same for notifications about new posts being made in a thread? Automatically generate a post from the email that is returned?

?

 

[Cezz]

So this is the desired operation?

People are emailed PC notifications:

• Members could email a reply with an answer, or
• the automated "i am out of the office until the 14th, I will respond to all emails then. <insert extremely long automated legal disclaimer about how only the intended recipient should be viewing this email, and please delete if you are not that person> <insert extremely long vcard of how to reach the person, their real name, their title in the corporation, their company contact information, etc>

And the same for notifications about new posts being made in a thread? Automatically generate a post from the email that is returned?

?

This is what I mentioned earler, XenForo would have to have some logic built in to be able to catch and ignore automated replies like out of office messages etc... But so far I am yet to see any system that does this well and I can see it spamming threads with the same "I am out of the office" reply over and over again... this is what currently happens in my ticket systems that accept reply by email.

Note: I have used 3 different tickets systems (Currently use two) and they ALL had/have this problem, how would xenforo avoid it?

Couldn't this feature effectively turn xenForo into a newsgroup? Once you are part of a thread everyone could start communicating via email, if there is also a user option to get emailed on every new post not just the first then that is exactly a news group... right?

 

[Shamil]

I swear we've been here before. I raised concerns that on a busy board, the server load might go up. I assume that this suggestion would use piping?

 

[Cezz]

I swear we've been here before. I raised concerns that on a busy board, the server load might go up. I assume that this suggestion would use piping?

Or it could just check the email inbox on a cron job... every hour or so, it would mean messages were delayed though.

I am not sure how it would cause that much server load... instead of the user loading then, posting the reply they would just reply to the email, email would be processed and posted... There is less DB queries if anything and less page loads...

The thing I wouldn't like about this, is that it actually gives no reason for the user to come back to your site, and if your income is advertisement driven this is bad.

 

[Shamil]

Or it could just check the email inbox on a cron job... every hour or so, it would mean messages were delayed though.

I am not sure how it would cause that much server load... instead of the user loading then, posting the reply they would just reply to the email, email would be processed and posted... There is less DB queries if anything and less page loads...

The thing I wouldn't like about this, is that it actually gives no reason for the user to come back to your site, and if your income is advertisement driven this is bad.

I remember what I was saying now.

It would increase load is the system imported posts via checking inboxes, and not piping. Especially at frequent intervals.

As you said, it doesn't give members a reason to visit your site.

 

[Cezz]

I remember what I was saying now.

It would increase load is the system imported posts via checking inboxes, and not piping. Especially at frequent intervals.

As you said, it doesn't give members a reason to visit your site.

Ahhh I get you if it is checking every hour on a busy board then every hour the loads would increase as it checked then processed each email... piping would be less load intensive as they will be processed as they come through, though it would be more unpredictable as if the email account suddenly got massively spammed the processing could really drive loads right up.

------------------------

I see it from two sides,

positive) making it easier for users to post on your site, means the site is more active and more people are going to join in, an email gateway really does make it easier for so many people especially those who use it from their phones.

negative) the users have no reason to go to your site itself so it may negatively effect advertising etc, unless you start including adverts in the emails which would probably annoy a fair few users.

 

[feldon30]

As you said, it doesn't give members a reason to visit your site.

30-50% of Yahoo Groups e-mail community users/participants do not want to visit a website to post/read. That is why despite powerful alternatives, these communities have stuck with Yahoo Groups (who bought out OneList and eGroups and now own the lion's share of e-mail communities). E-mail distribution communities are a huge market thus far untapped by forum software.

Obviously, if this system is implemented, in-email ads will need to be possible.

 

[Shamil]

30-50% of Yahoo Groups e-mail community users/participants DO NOT want to visit a website to post/read. That is why despite powerful alternatives, they have stuck with Yahoo Groups (who bought out OneList and eGroups and now own the lion's share of e-mail distribution communities). E-mail distribution communities are a huge market thus far untapped by forum software.

Obviously, if this system is implemented, in-email ads will need to be possible.

I believe Yahoo Groups/ email community is a different type of species to us forum users. They genuinely have an unattractive, unintuitive user interface.

Goodbye Google AdSense, for starters.

 

[Shamil]

Ahhh I get you if it is checking every hour on a busy board then every hour the loads would increase as it checked then processed each email... piping would be less load intensive as they will be processed as they come through, though it would be more unpredictable as if the email account suddenly got massively spammed the processing could really drive loads right up.

------------------------

I see it from two sides,

positive) making it easier for users to post on your site, means the site is more active and more people are going to join in, an email gateway really does make it easier for so many people especially those who use it from their phones.

negative) the users have no reason to go to your site itself so it may negatively effect advertising etc, unless you start including adverts in the emails which would probably annoy a fair few users.

I concur. Although, spamming via email. Spam filter required. As long as users don't create threads that way. However, I do have to add one more thing. The email will need to be pooled before made live. The system will need to MySQL it, and extract the post details, including username, from every post. This might create a small overhead.

 

[Cezz]

I believe Yahoo Groups/ email community is a different type of species to us forum users. They genuinely have an unattractive, unintuitive user interface.

Goodbye Google AdSense, for starters.

Indeed you would have to run two different types of advertising, one on-site and one via email...

As mentioned above I do see good and bad points here... and the unattractive/unintuitive UI's would be a thing of the past if xenForo came into that world.

 

[Cezz]

I concur. Although, spamming via email. Spam filter required. As long as users don't create threads that way. However, I do have to add one more thing. The email will need to be pooled before made live. The system will need to MySQL it, and extract the post details, including username, from every post. This might create a small overhead.

Hmmm, It would require two Queries to the mySQL DB... 1 for the username that goes against the email address and 2 the thread that goes against the random HASH... Then it would need to check for spam, and auto responders, check for duplicates and if it doesn't meet any of these then post it...

Compared to posting via the Web, still needs to check for user ID for that session, and then (if there is a spam filter) check for spam and post... So I agree there is slightly more overhead considering it also needs to parse the raw text of the email and strip out headers and other non-relevant info (also if they auto convert the bold/italic/underline etc from the email to BBCode).

 

[Shamil]

Hmmm, It would require two Queries to the mySQL DB... 1 for the username that goes against the email address and 2 the thread that goes against the random HASH... Then it would need to check for spam, and auto responders, check for duplicates and if it doesn't meet any of these then post it...

Compared to posting via the Web, still needs to check for user ID for that session, and then (if there is a spam filter) check for spam and post... So I agree there is slightly more overhead considering it also needs to parse the raw text of the email and strip out headers and other non-relevant info (also if they auto convert the bold/italic/underline etc from the email to BBCode).

It's not a very pleasant thing, though it's doable.

 

[Lisa]

A couple of problems I have with reply by email.

a) the reply you receive via email gets deleted from the thread - how do you know?
b) what if the thread gets closed - how do you know?
c) people don't generally want emails of every single reply made to a thread, but rather get a single notification until they revisit - so what if more replies are made between you receiving the email and your reply, making your own reply nonsensical or pointless?

 

[Cezz]

a) the reply you receive via email gets deleted from the thread - how do you know?

I guess the system can reply to you in this case saying "the message you are replying to has been deleted do you still wish to post?" This also makes me think it would be cool if the HASH is specific to each post and quotes the post you are replying to so the user gets the alert

b) what if the thread gets closed - how do you know?

Same as above you would get a reply from the system saying "I am sorry but this thread has been closed".

c) people don't generally want emails of every single reply made to a thread, but rather get a single notification until they revisit - so what if more replies are made between you receiving the email and your reply, making your own reply nonsensical or pointless?

This would be a choice of the user, if the user wants to use the reply via email feature then they would probably enable email on each reply... Also if they are replying to an older post if the post they are replying too is auto quoted as I suggested then it would still make sense.