New feature: Invite people directly into a thread or decision
Robert Guthrie
Public
Seen by 93
We're happy to introduce some new features which we think you'll find super useful:
- You can now invite people directly into threads or polls (or proposals), without them joining your group.
- You have control over who gets notified when you create a thread or poll or outcome.
Now when you create a group, thread, proposal or outcome, you'll see an invitation screen like this (for a group):
or this (for a proposal):
This form lets you select exactly who to notify about (or invite to join) your newly created group, thread, poll or outcome.
An important change to note: unless you select people to notify, nobody will get an immediate notification - which may be what you want. People will still see the new activity in their "Yesterday on Loomio" email and within the app.
To make notifying specific groups of people easy, you can choose from predefined audiences, such as "everyone in the thread" or "people who have not voted". Alternatively, you can enter individuals by name or email address and they'll get an email that brings them into the thing in question so they can participate right away.
The other great thing about this feature is that you can invite people who are not members of your group directly into your discussions and decisions. They'll get an email allowing them to participate immediately, but they won't get access to the rest of your group. This is useful in cases where you need to invite an external expert into a specific discussion.
With this feature delivered, we're closer to being able to support private threads (person to person, without a group) - so expect to see that soon.
Of course, we'd love to hear what you think about this feature. Please leave feedback in this thread. Thanks for using Loomio. 😀
Robert Guthrie Tue 15 May 2018 1:15AM
Whoops should not have deleted it, but it had nothing unique in it. It was just mature. I think we could cut a new stable from master now.
Matthew Bartlett Mon 7 May 2018 9:44PM
I noticed three dots next to my name in the Thread members panel, so I clicked them, and get a 'Remove from group' button. That feels an odd thing to be able to do from within one discussion. What's the vision?
James Kiesel Mon 7 May 2018 9:56PM
The intention of that is 'unsubscribe', although we have a small piece of work to do around crystalizing what unsubscribing from a poll or discussion means precisely.
Matthew Bartlett Mon 7 May 2018 10:56PM
I wonder if 'leave the discussion' might be clearer? (Currently reads to me like I'd be exiting the whole group). In that case I'd imagine if I clicked it:
- there'd be an activity item that said "Matthew Bartlett left the discussion" (like in Slack 'Matthew left #channel' but a little less cryptic/terse)
- I'd not longer get notifications about new content in that discussion unless I were specifically at-mentioned or re-invited, or added myself back in.
(Forgive my passive-aggressive campaigning for 'discussion' rather than 'thread' :) )
Danyl Strype Wed 16 May 2018 6:27AM
Forgive my passive-aggressive campaigning for 'discussion' rather than 'thread
Not only do I forgive it, I +1 it. "Thread" is a comfortable term for us greybeards who have done our time on mailing lists and web forums. I'm guessing a non-jargon term like "discussion" or "conversation" is clearer for most users. That said though, do either of these terms really get to the core of what a thread is in Loomio; a temporary breakout group convened to make a series of decisions within a (hopefully) carefully defined domain?
EDIT: I often find it helpful to think about the equivalent to a given Loomio feature would be in a F2F decision-making process.
Matthew Bartlett Tue 8 May 2018 3:12AM
Attached is from an email associated with a new discussion. I suggest adding 'to the discussion'; i.e. "MES invited you to join the discussion: Deloitte business…". Or even "MES invited you to join the discussion on Loomio: Deloitte business…" This would be to make it clear that I'm not being invited to join a group, or a meeting, or something else…
Robert Guthrie Tue 8 May 2018 5:12AM
Yea, I can see the sense in that. Except we would say Thread these days. Thank you.
ben h. Fri 11 May 2018 1:32PM
@robertguthrie
this is quite a big change!
we used the announcement aspect of new threads a lot - and this functionality is now gone (as far as i can see)
is there now a way to send an announcement - that includes the description in the email (rather than just an invitation to the thread - i don't know what the invitation includes - as i can't invite myself as a test)??
Robert Guthrie Fri 11 May 2018 1:41PM
Hi Ben, sorry to alarm! When you 'invite people to the thread' they get the same email as before - the difference is that now you can see exactly who will be emailed, and add or remove people before it's sent out.
James Kiesel · Tue 15 May 2018 1:10AM
Hmm we need to restore that stable branch; I reckon @robertguthrie will have a recent version of it.
Have you run rake db:migrate on your instance recently? There should be a migration to backfill the discussion members; alternatively you can run
require 'db/legacy/backfill_discussion_members_job'
BackfillDiscussionMembersJob.new.perform
in a console to run the code that that migration runs for backfilling.