Using Discourse: Checking in and Notifications

Discourse will only work for us if we fully invest in it as part of our workflow. We should set up a process to help us with this.

We will need to vigilant about new topics and conversations on these boards. We can depend upon our own scheduling to check in often, and hope that we routinely check in - or we could make it easier for ourselves and set up a process where we are reminded to check in and contribute.

The best way to do this is email notifications, as far as I know. If anyone has any other suggestions, I would love to hear them.

Unfortunately, it looks like Discourse may not have notification via email for new topics or responses to existing topics. Has anyone figured that out yet?

This post can be a grab-bag for how to get notified and how to set up a practice of routinely checking this board.

I’m trying the “mailing list mode”. Under Personal Settings > Preferences > Mailing list mode

I set it to send me an email whenever anyone posts anything. We’ll see how that goes.

Hm, that’s weird. I have done no configuration and I get notifications for threads where I’ve replied to before (or created) but not for new threads, which honestly, I’m fine with (but I realize it’s not for everyone).

There does seem to be a lot configuration per user under preferences though, like getting a summary email every X minutes/hours/days for new activity, maybe what we’re looking for.

I would be careful of setting a default for all users though.

Related: It looks like discourse is requiring moderators to approve new topics. (I had to approve a topic @hector added)