There are several community-based email messages that can be customized and automatically sent to your community users. These messages fall into two high-level categories: Community Notifications and Discussion Notifications.

Community Notifications

There are two types of Community Notifications email messages: Daily Consolidated Digest and Weekly Consolidated Digest. These Consolidated Digest messages:

• are sent regularly because an Admin configures a send schedule for them.
• include information about and/or links to all community activity (e.g., announcements, volunteer opportunities, events, and discussions), consolidated in one message, for the time period (daily or weekly).

Discussion Notifications

There are two types of Discussion Notifications: Real Time and Daily Digest. These notification email messages:

• are triggered by new posts in community Discussion threads and Q&A threads.
• include content that is related to only thread-based activities.

NOTE: Users decide for themselves whether they want these notification messages sent to them, and each user self-manages these settings (i.e., opts in or opts out) as described in Manage your Community Notifications.

Access the Digest Templates page

The Digest Templates page has two tabs:

• Digest Templates is where you configure the templates for the Daily Digest and Real Time email messages.
• Consolidated Digests is where you enable (and disable) the Daily Consolidated Digest and Weekly Consolidated Digest email messages and configure settings that apply to both.

To access the Digest Templates page:

1. In the Admin Toolbar, click Admin.

2. Navigate to Email > Discussions > Digest Templates.

The sections that follow describes the settings on the two Digest tabs.

Manage the Digest 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 sections

Use these two sections to manage which content is included in the respective email messages.

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 logo displays in the email message
• 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

The Reply to Sender settings

The "reply to sender" feature makes it possible for recipients of the Digest email messages to reply directly and only to the author of the post that they're replying to. When these settings are enabled, a link or button is added to the Digest email message which, when clicked:

• Reply to Sender Online opens the community site in a browser and takes the user to a form on which they can compose and send a private reply to the author of the post.
• Reply to Sender via Email opens a new email message in the user's default email client with the appropriate reply-to address is pre-filled. The user can compose and send a private reply to the author of the post without having to access the community.

NOTE: Some Admins prefer to disable these settings in order to ensure that recipients of Digest email messages reply to the discussion, rather than just the author. This ensures that the reply is visible to all community users.

There are several "reply to sender" settings in both of these templates that you can use to manage (enable or disable) this ability.

Manage the Reply to Sender settings

You can manage the Reply to Sender settings in several places 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, scroll down to the Message Buttons and Message Links sections.
2. Uncheck the Reply to Sender boxes for those options that you want to disable.
3. Scroll down to the Real Time section to manage its settings.
4. Click Save at the bottom of the page.

TIP: Specify your email address in the Test field at the bottom to send a sample email message to yourself; you can review it and confirm that the layout is as you intend.

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 message.

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 not available for Real Time email messages and it is disabled by default for Daily Digest messages.

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 Announcements List widget for each community.

Announcements that were posted 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 the Consolidated Digests

The daily and weekly Consolidated Digests offer a comprehensive account of all activity that has occurred in a community during the previous day and week, respectively.

On the Consolidated Digests tab, you can:

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

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

In this section, you manage whether your site's Daily Consolidated Digest and Weekly Consolidated Digest email messages are sent.

NOTE: Your community users can self-manage whether they want an account of a 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.

Configure Consolidated Digest email content

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.

NOTE: The settings on this page are applicable to both Consolidated Digests. The Digests cannot be individually configured.

1. Toggle the Include option to Yes (include) or No (exclude) for the following content types.

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

2. For each content type, you can set the maximum number of characters to display in the email messages for the title and body text. This is a great way to limit the amount of content in the messages.

NOTE: Recipients can click an entry in the Digest message to view the its full content.

3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save.

Auto-subscription for Consolidated Digests

The auto-subscription feature can be configured for 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.

Discussions 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.