In this article, you'll learn how to:

Manage the system templates for your Discussion-based Real Time and Daily Digest emails.
These emails are triggered by new discussions posts. Whether a user receives these emails depends on their Community Notification settings (they can opt in or out of these emails).
Enable or disable Daily and/or Weekly Consolidated Digest emails for your Higher Logic site, and control what content is included in them.
Unlike Real Time and Daily Digest emails, these are not dependent on discussion content. These community-based digests offer a comprehensive view of ALL community activity from the previous day or week. They can include new announcements, blogs, discussions, events, library uploads, question and answer posts, and new volunteer opportunities.

If you're not familiar with these two types of community notifications, check out Manage Your Community Notifications to learn more.

These actions are performed on the Digest Templates page, located in the Admin interface. To access it:

In the Admin Toolbar, click Admin.

Navigate to Email > Discussions > Digest Templates.

Manage your discussion templates

On the Digest Templates tab, you can manage the templates for the Real Time and Daily Digest email notifications sent from the community Discussions across your site.

This page comprises three main areas:

Common

In the Common area at the top, you can upload a logo, add header text, and insert custom links to include in both templates.

Daily Digest & Real-Time

In the Daily Digest and Real-Time areas, you can control what content is included in these templates, and configure specific settings for this content, including:

Where the email logo is displayed
Where Banner and Post advertisements are displayed
Whether links are included in the emails allowing users to post a message online (i.e., in the actual Discussion) or via the email
Whether navigation buttons are included allowing users to navigate through the digest's messages
Whether message buttons are included allowing users to reply to the sender/group online and/or via email
The thread history to include for each message
The digest email's Footer

Disable Reply to Sender

Many customers want recipients of these emails to reply to the entire discussion, NOT just to the sender, to ensure knowledge is shared with everyone.

If you want to prevent email recipients from mistakenly doing this, you can disable the Reply to Sender option for both the Daily Digest and Real Time templates.

In the Daily Digest area, in the Message Buttons and Message Links sections, uncheck the Reply to Sender via Email box.
Repeat step 1 in the Real Time area below.
Click Save at the bottom of the page.

TIP: To make it easy to see one of these templates in action, you can enter your email address in the Test field at the bottom to send a sample email to yourself.

Include a Recommend option

You can set whether Daily Digest and/or Real Time emails include a recommend option to the recipients. The option is set separately for these templates, but the setting operates the same for both.

To enable the Recommend option for Daily Digest and/or Real Time templates:

Scroll down to Daily Digest > Message Links or to Real Time > Message Links (or set one after the other).

In these sections:

Check the Recommend box to enable the option (uncheck the box to disable it).
Optionally, specify an alternate label, such as "Thumbs Up!!" or "Like".
Click the dropdown to select a numbered position for the option (this determines its location in the email).

NOTE: Be sure to set each position number to only one option. If you change one option, "re-position" the one that now has the same position number.

The Position setting determines where the option will be in the email message.

EXAMPLE: In this example, the recommend option has been renamed Like and assigned position 3.

When the option is enabled, your digest recipients will be able to recommend a post right from the Daily Digest and/or Real Time email.

Daily Digest Announcements

Do you want another vehicle to get the word out about upcoming organizational news, events, webinars, etc.? In addition to all the other community tools at your disposal, you can include announcements in daily digest emails.

NOTE: This feature is disabled, by default.

Enable Announcements

To enable this feature, check the Include Announcements box in the Daily Digest area. You can even set a title and text maximum character limit if you need to ensure announcements are concise.

How does it work?

Once enabled, announcements are pulled from the Announcement List widget for each community.

Announcements posted the previous day will be included in the Daily Digest the next day for that community.

If you post only one new announcement, it will be the only one included in the Daily Digest.
If you post multiple new announcements in a single day, they'll be displayed in the digest in the order they were posted.

Manage Consolidated Digest emails

On the Consolidated Digests tab, you can:

Enable and disable your site's Consolidated Digest emails
Control what content can be included in them (e.g., discussions, blogs, etc.)

NOTE: Blogs won't show up in Consolidated Digests unless their view permissions are set to Public, Authenticated, or Selected Community.

Let's go over this tab's two main areas: Enable / Disable and Consolidated Digest Emails Configuration.

Enable / Disable

Here, you can enable and disable your site's Daily and Weekly Consolidated Digest emails. These emails offer users a comprehensive view of all activity occurring in their community during the previous day or week.

NOTE: Enabling a Consolidated Digest doesn't mean users will automatically begin receiving it. This decision is left solely up to each user. Upon joining a community, each user decides whether to include that community's content in their Daily and/or Weekly Consolidated Digest. In addition, users can manage these settings at any time from their profiles, on the My Account > Community Notifications page.

Consolidated Digest Emails Configuration

Use the settings in this area to control the position of the community logo and to manage what community content is included in these digests. For the following content types, toggle the Include option to Yes or No to include or exclude it:

Announcements
Blogs
Discussion Posts
Events
Library Entries
Question & Answer Posts
Volunteer Opportunities

For each content type, you can also set the maximum number of characters to display in the emails for both the title and body text. This is a great way to streamline the emails by limiting the size of the content within. Recipients can simply click the content they're interested in to view the full discussion, blog article, etc.

TIP: If you make any changes, be sure to click Save at the bottom of the page.

Auto-subscription for Consolidated Digests

The auto-subscription feature can be configured for both Higher Logic-managed and AMS-managed communities.

AMS-managed communities

Auto-subscription for AMS-managed communities has to be configured in the community by a Higher Logic staff member. To request this, create a case.

HL-managed communities

Auto-subscription for HL-managed communities has to be configured and set per community, via an Automation Rule.

In the Admin interface, navigate to Automation > Automation Rules and then either create or edit an automation rule.

On the Create/Edit Rule page:

Select to add — to an individual community — anyone who is already a user in your Higher Logic site.
Subscribe to the frequency selected.

Scroll down to the Include in section and check one or both Consolidated Digest options.

Discussion email colors

In addition to the email-template management options discussed in this article, you can use the Color Picker > Discussions tab of the Theme Editor to manage the default colors of your Discussion-based emails.

NOTE: If override colors are not set here, Discussion Digest emails will inherit the colors from the Main Colors tab.

Learn how to configure the default delivery settings for digest email messages and send a test digest message in Manage Digest Delivery Settings.

Manage Email Digests