Configuring forum notifications at forum and thread level

This should be the default behavior - turning notifications on at the forum level should notify of new threads, and only an action on a thread (eg, creating, replying, explicitly turning notifications on, possibly also include liking/rating i believe - would need to confirm) should subscribe the user to updates on that thread.

Do you have any custom plugins or automations relating to forums or notifications?

Do you have an example you could screenshot of a user getting a notification about a thread, and confirmed have had no interaction with?

Hi , apologies if I'm missing something really obvious! You say that turning notifications on at the forum level should notify users of new threads, but I can't see the option to do that on our forum (v11.1.3). If I'm using the Group - Links widget, I can't see a way to present users with an option to turn on/off forum-level notifications. 

Just wondering if you could provide any more detail here?

In the Forum - Links widget, the option is presented via the "Notifications" link option when shown on a page without a thread in the context, for example, when viewing the list of threads as on this page on this site: 

https://community.telligent.com/community/11/f/ask-the-community 

For the visual learners out there (like me!), looking at the link Ben provided, on the right side of the page, near the bottom of that right rail:

Hi both,

Thanks so much for this - makes total sense. 

I think I've confused myself here, but now I can see where I went wrong...

I was looking at notifications on a group level, not a forum level, so that's why I can't see 'notifications' when configuring the widget. 

I don't suppose there's a way to do this then, on a group level?

p.s. Grant Pankonien - thanks for the visuals! I'm also a visual learner, so that was very helpful in me finding out where I went wrong

EllenB We had this same requirement on our side. When a user joins a group, they're automatically subscribed to the forum (if exists) for that group. They're not subscribed to blogs, calendar, etc. applications though. I installed https://community.telligent.com/marketplace/mp/listings/application-subscription-automation on our site in which I manually configured every group to auto-subscribe users to all applications within that group when joining the group. Hope this helps! 

Happy to help! Just to confirm, on a group homepage, you'd like the option for users to subscribe or un-subscribe to forums that are in that group, correct? Making sure I follow before I look for the answer. Thanks!

Ahhhh, Alex Nassi this is helpful thank you! 

We've recently moved away from having only one forum within a group, which I think is what's sparked this. As members were used to being subscribed to one forum (which from their POV was one group) but now we're slowly introducing more forums within each group (to help with content categorisation), they're not getting the same level of notifications they were used to. 

It's definitely a bit of an educational piece, but I wanted to know if there were other options we could offer - which it sounds like there is! 

Thanks for sharing this, it's really helpful

Grant Pankonien - yes, if possible! It sounds like Alex's solution is a good option, but with us bringing in a couple of different forums per group, it would be really good to be able to manage notifications for forums on a group level. This would help us clarify for users notifications at a forum level vs group level... If that makes sense?

EllenB I hope it works out! I'm also weighing the benefits in certain situations of multiple forums in a group or breaking into more groups. 

Somewhat off-topic, but I noticed something with having multiple forums in one group that you may run into: If you customize the theme at all to the forum, it affects all the pages within the group. For example, we customized the "Create/Edit Forum Thread/Reply" page with some HTML widgets titling it "Forum XYZ", but the other forum in the group ("Forum ABC") also showed the same widget for XYZ. So, be sure any theming updates you do are GROUP specific, not FORUM specific

EllenB I hope it works out! I'm also weighing the benefits in certain situations of multiple forums in a group or breaking into more groups. 

Somewhat off-topic, but I noticed something with having multiple forums in one group that you may run into: If you customize the theme at all to the forum, it affects all the pages within the group. For example, we customized the "Create/Edit Forum Thread/Reply" page with some HTML widgets titling it "Forum XYZ", but the other forum in the group ("Forum ABC") also showed the same widget for XYZ. So, be sure any theming updates you do are GROUP specific, not FORUM specific