Notification preferences are an important part of the Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla) community experience because they ensure that users receive in-app and/or email notifications about content they're interested in.
In this article, you'll learn:
- (Users) How to manage your notification preferences via your profile
- (Admins) How to configure a set of default notification preferences for your new community users
(Users) Manage your notification preferences
As a member of your Vanilla community, you're likely to interact with a lot of content from other members, and create a lot of your own, and these engagements may generate notifications.
That's where the Notification Preferences page comes in: it's where you control which popup and/or email notifications you receive from content activity across your community. This ensures that you:
- never miss an important update regarding content you're interested in,
- have the choice to not receive notifications.
Access the Notification Preferences page
1. Click your MeBox > Account & Privacy Settings.
2. Click Notification Preferences in the right-hand list.
Manage your preferences
The first thing to understand when setting your notification preferences is that there are two notification options for activity in the community: by Popup and Email, represented by the bell and envelope icons, respectively.
When a post is created:
- Popup notifications are displayed in near real-time directly in the community, at the bottom left of your screen.
- The system generates an Email notification and sends it to your personal inbox within minutes of the content being posted.
The Notification Preferences page groups your notification options in the categories below. Check the Popup and/or Email checkboxes for each option to control which notifications you'll receive, and how, for each type of community content.
📝 NOTE: You do not have to manually save your changes because each time you check or uncheck a box, that change is automatically saved.
My Account
- These notifications pertain to content associated with your profile, such as Ranks and badges.
Community Tasks
- These notifications relate to tasks tied to your community permissions. For example, if you're responsible for managing membership requests, you'll see that option listed here.
- Use these options to decide whether to receive notifications pertaining to tasks you manage in the community. We generally recommend enabling these notifications to help you manage your tasks in an efficient and timely manner.
Posts
- These notifications relate to posts (discussions, questions, ideas, etc.) you've created, posts from other users you've commented on, and posts you've bookmarked. Essentially, you can think of these as posts you've interacted with in some way.
- Use these options to control what notifications to receive pertaining to your Followed Posts.
Groups
- If the Groups and Events addon is enabled in your community, you may be able to create or join discussion Groups. These are designed to give a smaller subset of your community a self-contained public or private space to have discussions outside the existing Category structure (typically to discuss a more specialized or focused topic). Check out this article to learn more about Groups.
- Use these options to decide whether to receive updates relating to Group memberships and content updates.
Categories
- If Category Following is enabled in your community, you can Follow a Category via its bell icon. Then, you'll be able to choose whether to receive notifications about content in that Category. Check out this article to learn more about Category Following.
- Use these two options to set your default notification preferences for when you Follow a Category.
Weekly Email Digest
The Notification Preferences page is also where you manage the Weekly Email Digest.
- At the bottom of the page, check or uncheck the Send me the email digest box to control whether to receive it.
Check out the article below to learn more about the email digest.
(Admins) Set default notification preferences for your users
While users are free to manage their own notification preferences at any time from their profiles (as described above), Admins can configure a default set of notification preferences that will be automatically assigned to all new users so they're more likely to receive updates about content they're interested in. This can help increase the level of engagement in your community.
📝 NOTE: In addition to new users, these default preferences will also retroactively be assigned to existing users who have not manually updated their own preferences since becoming a member of your community. Existing users who have updated their preferences will not be affected.
Let's walk through how to set this up.
1. Access the Dashboard.
2. Navigate to Settings > Membership > User Preferences.
3. Click Edit Default Notifications.
4. In the dialog, the notification preferences are grouped in the category tabs at the top. Click these tabs and check the popup and/or email boxes to set the default for each preference.
📝 NOTE: Refer to the Manage your preferences section earlier in this article to learn more about the popup and email notification types, along with explanations of each preference category.
5. Click Save to apply your changes.
📝 NOTE: These preferences are permission-gated, so notifications associated to tasks a user does not have access to will not be sent to them. For example, users who don't have permission to manage Groups will not be automatically subscribed to receive notifications about Group requests.
Unsubscribe option in notification email
By default, all notification emails have an Unsubscribe link at the bottom. Users can click it to be automatically unsubscribed from that notification.
A user who clicks the link is:
- immediately unsubscribed from the notification and
- taken to the Unsubscribe page.
The Unsubscribe page confirms for the user their unsubscribe action.
✔️ TIP: On the page, the user can undo the action to reverse the unsubscribe and continue receiving the notifications.
📝 NOTE: Unsubscribing is unique to the notification that contained the link. Unsubscribing from one notification in a category (e.g., Posts) does not affect other notifications in the same category (e.g., Posts) or notifications from any other categories (e.g., Groups, Community Tasks). Refer to Other notifications in the same category, below.
Other notifications in the same category
A user who is subscribed to several notifications in one category (e.g., Posts, Groups, or Community Tasks), might be receiving multiple notifications for a single action. The user can manage those other notifications as well (as shown below).
- Other "notification subscriptions" in the same category are listed with boxes that can be unchecked to unsubscribe.
✔️ TIP: Users can also click either Manage All Notifications (upper right) or the text, notification preferences page, to access the Notification Preferences page in their profile.
