I have set up a group where there is a lot of active “hard” business and the moderator’s messages *must* be read by the group members. I just got everyone on my committee to finally join the Commons group and now I am in the process of creating some simple documentation for my moderator(s) to use the group well.

My moderator’s messages often involve spreadsheets–the Announcements feature doesn’t allow for attachments. Only the Forum allows attachments. In order to make sure everyone gets an email about a mandatory piece of business, my moderator should
1. start a topic in the Forum, write message and then upload attachment
2. then announce via Announcements and check off the box email to all.

Does this make sense? That way, if there are questions or discussion, members can go into the Forum and post if desired. And the moderator can provide feedback via the Forum and the message is part of the thread.

I have set up a group where there is a lot of active “hard” business and the moderator’s messages *must* be read by the group members. I just got everyone on my committee to finally join the Commons group and now I am in the process of creating some simple documentation for my moderator(s) to use the group well.

My moderator’s messages often involve spreadsheets–the Announcements feature doesn’t allow for attachments. Only the Forum allows attachments. In order to make sure everyone gets an email about a mandatory piece of business, my moderator should
1. start a topic in the Forum, write message and then upload attachment
2. then announce via Announcements and check off the box email to all.

Does this make sense? That way, if there are questions or discussion, members can go into the Forum and post if desired. And the moderator can provide feedback via the Forum and the message is part of the thread.

[Matthew K. Gold (he/him)]

Hi Monica,

That sounds right to me. I suppose that we can look into attaching documents to announcements that get forced out to groups, but you’d still need to create a forum post in order to have discussion around that message.

For now, it seems to me that you’ve got this right. The only issue to think about is that using the system above, most of your members will receive two notifications, which could become cumbersome over time.

As we have thought about the issue of group announcements on the Commons, we have tried to find a balance between the needs of group admins and the preferences of members. Our general sense is that if a member elects not to receive forum posts by email, that preference should be respected by the site. But, because we know group admins rely on the announcement feature, we have kept it so that it can be used as you have described.

I hope that this is helpful. Please let me know whether you have further thoughts.

Best,

Matt

[Monica Berger (She/her/hers)]

Would it be possible to allow attachments for announcements? I agree that the double messages will be annoying to folks. But if discussion is needed, it is easy for a member to start a thread separately. And the discussion is likely to be less “manditory” or urgent.

I will, by the way, make sure everyone knows about the nifty new digest feature.

[Matthew K. Gold (he/him)]

Hi Monica,

We’ll look into creating this functionality. Please follow this ticket for news: http://redmine.gc.cuny.edu/issues/show/506

Best,

Matt

[Monica Berger (She/her/hers)]

thanks for opening the ticket. I’ve added the ticket to my RSS reader. I’m guessing this is the best way to get notification of a change, right?

[Matthew K. Gold (he/him)]

Yes. You can also create an account on our Redmine install (http://redmine.gc.cuny.edu) and “watch” the ticket, which should send you email updates.