[xwiki-devs] idea: announce plugin
Hello fellow developers, for my local association (Scouts de Forbach), I've been pushing to get an XWiki which is now deployed and starts slowly to be used. One of the central objectives is to get a communication channel between the members. A forum could be sufficient but a wiki is useful already per se. For the communication, I could go in the direction of the message-board or the emerging discussions' module but I am thinking that the threading is not the most important part but the delivery and making sure that people read it. Thus I am thinking of an "Announce" class whose objects would be added by a menu and would first show a dialog inviting to indicate recipients and send the email. Once sent, the announce keeps a track of the version number and the users and emails that have been sent. The email sent is in html, contains the whole page content, and contains a tracker image, individualized by recipient. The image pull, which is activated when people show images (I know not all do), would then update the object and show to the (registered) readers of that page that the given user has read it. Considering my experience of a somewhat uncertain communication it seems to be a useful addition to stimulate the usage of the wiki and to enroll people that do not necessarily go there often. Is anything such existing? Can some of you make other suggestions? What would be the way for me to embed such a menu action and the display of the announce space? thanks in advance. Paul
Hello, I would have the following "worries": - performance of pulling / update object on images individualized by recipient, if there are really many recipients (which is in general the case for an "Announce") - what if recipients are distribution lists or generic emails ? (that's also often the case of "Announces"). I don't think there's any easy way to know what are the "real" recipients behind ... You could also have a look at return receipt [1] though it's a pretty uncertain mechanism. Though quite different use-case, the most similar I know may be the Newsletter Application. Ideally, I suppose some "Distribution List Application" may be a nice addition, to be (re)used both by the NewsLetter application and your proposed app ;-) So you could create DLs inside the wiki, then send an Announce or a Newsletter to a particular DL (instead of relying on DLs managed by various email or mailing lists servers - but on another side, that's encroaching on those servers' territory :) ). BR, Jeremie [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_receipt [2] - http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Newsletter+Application 2013/7/17 Paul Libbrecht <[email protected]>
Hello fellow developers,
for my local association (Scouts de Forbach), I've been pushing to get an XWiki which is now deployed and starts slowly to be used.
One of the central objectives is to get a communication channel between the members. A forum could be sufficient but a wiki is useful already per se.
For the communication, I could go in the direction of the message-board or the emerging discussions' module but I am thinking that the threading is not the most important part but the delivery and making sure that people read it.
Thus I am thinking of an "Announce" class whose objects would be added by a menu and would first show a dialog inviting to indicate recipients and send the email. Once sent, the announce keeps a track of the version number and the users and emails that have been sent. The email sent is in html, contains the whole page content, and contains a tracker image, individualized by recipient. The image pull, which is activated when people show images (I know not all do), would then update the object and show to the (registered) readers of that page that the given user has read it.
Considering my experience of a somewhat uncertain communication it seems to be a useful addition to stimulate the usage of the wiki and to enroll people that do not necessarily go there often.
Is anything such existing? Can some of you make other suggestions? What would be the way for me to embed such a menu action and the display of the announce space?
thanks in advance.
Paul _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
I would have the following "worries": - performance of pulling / update object on images individualized by recipient, if there are really many recipients (which is in general the case for an "Announce")
Yes, I had realized that and expect to use it for associations with less than 100 intended recipients.
- what if recipients are distribution lists or generic emails ? (that's also often the case of "Announces"). I don't think there's any easy way to know what are the "real" recipients behind ...
As good as email can be; this is true. Although I do not know how to implement it, I would favour to use user-names and resort to individual emails separately. This also supports better the read-witnessing (avatar, user-name, ... no cryptic emails).
You could also have a look at return receipt [1] though it's a pretty uncertain mechanism.
It seems to have gone away from most email clients nowadays. I am not sure why.
Though quite different use-case, the most similar I know may be the Newsletter Application. Ideally, I suppose some "Distribution List Application" may be a nice addition, to be (re)used both by the NewsLetter application and your proposed app ;-) So you could create DLs inside the wiki, then send an Announce or a Newsletter to a particular DL (instead of relying on DLs managed by various email or mailing lists servers - but on another side, that's encroaching on those servers' territory :) ).
[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_receipt [2] - http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Newsletter+Application
Where I found the idea of announce nice is that the content of the announce is visible as one page and its "reads" are displayed there as well. People can refer to it and show it to each other. Compared to a newsletter distribution list, a facet of an association with local activity is that the names and faces of others are almost all known so that displaying the recipients name is a good idea. I do not seem to see this there. The template approach might be useful indeed but it seems a bit "profesional oriented". Also, I strongly refuse to send PDF files instead of email bodies as this encourages weight in the mailboxes, left-around-files in the attachments' temporary directories, and almost encourages the people to print. paul
participants (2)
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Jeremie BOUSQUET -
Paul Libbrecht