Who gets notified by email and when?

When you create a discussion board you have the option of enabling email notifications for moderator comments and member replies.

If you have selected the option to allow topic notifications, comment and reply email alerts, then the following will occur:

1. When a topic is posted all participants will receive the topic notification if they have been invited to the discussion, whether they have accepted the email invitation or not (assumes you have the option to allow topic notifications checked to be on in the options section).
2. When the "Moderator" comments on the discussion topic all other members who have been invited to the discussion will receive an email alert (Comment Alert) letting them know that the moderator has posted a comment (including the first 200 characters of the comment) and encourages them to log in to take a look.
3. When anyone on the group Replies to a Comment, the owner of that comment will receive an email the first 200 characters of the reply (Reply Alert) letting them know that a particular member has replied to their comment and for them to log in and take a look.

Please note: the Moderator and All members do not get notified when a participant posts a comment. This is to ensure that members do not get bombarded by email alerts for every comment posted.

Sending out reminder, broadcast or password reset emails?

Sending out passwords is done via the Communication table in the discussion board summary area. All participants will receive the password when invitations are sent using the Send to all option. Alternatively you can use the send to selected option and choose individuals to send the password to. 

Please note: if you need to resend the password you will need to use the 'Reset password' option. For more information please review the topic on sending passwords.

Sending out reminders can be done one of two ways. The first method is by using the communications table in the discussion board summary area. Using the Send to all option will only send the reminder email to those participants who have not yet Accepted the invitation by logging in. Using the send to selected option will again only send the reminder emails to those that have not yet Accepted the invitation by logging in, but will give you the option of selecting which participants you want to include in the reminder email notification.

The second option to send reminder emails is by using the Send Reminder button located in the Actions column under the Participants tab.

If you are using this option you will be sending a reminder email for each participant as selected.

Please note: using this option will enable you to send reminder emails to all participants including those that have Accepted the invitation by logging in at least once. This is a useful option if you have not heard from an individual participant for a period of time and need to specifically remind an individual to log in!

Email Broadcasts enable you to send periodic and ad-hock email messages to participants who have Accepted the board invitation by logging into the discussion board at least once.

Please note: Participants who have not yet Accepted the invitation, by logging in, will NOT receive a broadcast email message.

To communicate with participants who have not yet logged in (assuming you have already sent the invitation & password) you use the reminder email option. For more information on broadcast emails please click on this link.

Communications email counter

The email communication table includes an email counter located to the far right of each row. This counter will advance each time you send an email to display the total number of emails sent for each email type. It does not show the number of emails sent on each occasion, rather it adds them as a total over the duration of the discussion board.