Real Time and Daily Digest email messages are triggered by new discussions posts. Whether these email messages are sent to a user depends on each user's Community Notification settings (i.e., they can opt in or opt out of these messages).

On the other hand, Daily and Weekly Consolidated Digest email messages 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.

You can manage all of these email templates on the Digest Templates page, located in the Admin interface. To access it:

1. In the Admin Toolbar, click Admin.

2. Navigate to Email > Discussions > Digest Templates.

Manage your digest-message templates

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

The Digest Templates tab has three main sections: Common, Daily Digest, and Real Time, each of which has its own settings.

Common

Use this section to establish "global" settings for your Daily Digest and Real Time templates. Here, you can:

• upload a logo,
• add header text, and
• insert custom links.

Anything that you configure here will be applied to both templates and, subsequently, to all Daily Digest and Real Time email messages that are sent.

Daily Digest and Real Time

Use these two sections to manage what content is included in the respective templates.

NOTE: Some of the settings in these two sections (e.g., Post New Message via Email and Reply to Sender via Email) have * Does not apply to Q&A threads indicators. This is because, by design, Q&A threads do not support processing inbound mail, as Discussion threads do.



The indicators are simply to alert you to the fact that these options will not display for Q&A thread entries in the Digest email messages.

You can configure:

• Where the email logo displays
• Where Banner and Post advertisements display
• Whether to include links in the Digest messages to allow users to post a message online (i.e., in the actual Discussion) or via the email
• Whether to include navigation buttons in the Digest messages to allow users to navigate through the digest's messages
• Whether to include message buttons in the Digest messages to allow users to reply to the sender/group online and/or via email
• How much of each thread's history to include
• The digest email's Footer content

Disable Reply to Sender settings

You can disable two settings in order to ensure that recipients of Digest emails to reply to the entire discussion, not to just the sender. This increases the likelihood of the reply being seen by more community users.

You can disable the Reply to Sender settings for both templates.

NOTE: Consider the asterisked message for these settings, * Overrides profile security settings and exposes sender's email address, when managing them.

1. In the Daily Digest section, in the Message Buttons and Message Links sections, uncheck the "Reply to Sender via Email" boxes.
2. Scroll down to the Real Time section and repeat step 1.
3. 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:

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

2. 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

You can include announcements in the Daily Digest messages in order to easily inform the recipients about other organizational goings-on, such as news, events, and webinars.

NOTE: This feature is disabled by default.

Enable Announcements

To enable this feature:

1. Check the Include Announcements box in the Daily Digest section.
2. Optionally, set a maximum character limit for the title and/or text of announcements to ensure that long titles and descriptions are kept concise.

How it works

Announcements are pulled from the Announcement List widget for each community.

Announcements that were posted on the previous day are included in the next day's Daily Digest for the 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 on a single day, they'll display 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)

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

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

Enable / Disable

Here, you can manage whether your site's Daily Consolidated Digest and Weekly Consolidated Digest email messages are sent. The Consolidated Digests offer a comprehensive account of all activity that has occurred in their community during the previous day and week respectively.

NOTE: Your community users can self-manage whether they want an account of a given community's activity, so all users might not receive the messages.

Upon joining a community, each user decides whether to include that community's content in their Daily and/or Weekly Consolidated Digest, and they can manage these settings on their My Account > Community Notifications page.

Consolidated Digest Emails Configuration

Use the settings in this section to set the placement 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 (include) or No (exclude).

• 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 the title and body text. This is a great way to limit the amount of content in the messages.

• Recipients can click an entry in order to view its full content.

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.

Related articles

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