Messages in Discourse (i.e. the eHealth Forum)

Public How To
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What are Messages? And how do they differ from Chat?

Messages are deeper conversations away from the Forum itself. If the eHealth Forum is a large busy conference, a Message is a solid conversation in a break-out room.

In contrast, Chat is the spontaneous discussion in the corner of the room, or the quick naughty exchange with your neighbour during a boring bit of a presentation (surely not at a HiNZ conference, eh?).

How do I send one?

Easy. Click on a image box and you are away. You’ll find them in these places:

  1. by clicking on any user that you wish to message (e.g. @emily.gill)
  2. by clicking on or visiting a group page (e.g. @moderators)
  3. on the My messages page

How do I find Messages that have been sent to me?

You’ll receive a notification for each Message, which you see on your Avatar. By default, the eHealth Forum will also send you an email, but this can be changed in your email settings.

To rediscover old Messages, simply click on the My messages link in the top right corner (under the hamburger menu on mobile). Group messages are here too, and also in each Group page. You can search them quite easily.

Can a PM be changed into a Topic or vice-versa?

Topics and PMs are in fact identical in the database, and only differ really as to who has access to them. Hence, they can easily be converted one to the other. They have been made to appear different to communicate their different functions. Experienced users gain the ability to change one to the other, but you can also ask @moderators to do this for you.

Likewise, Chat can be moved to a Topic or a Message with relative ease by using the "Quote functionality.

Email and Messages

Messages can be addressed to email recipients (only trusted users can initiate this), and ongoing interaction can happen via email. This is very useful for including someone who doesn’t have an eHealth Forum account.

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Īs there a way in which we can create groups for messages in Discourse? When I go to create a message, it says I can add a group but I’m wondering how I can create one beforehand.

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Are you talking chat or messages?

You can make adhoc groups either way:

In Messages

Simply add the participants to the message.

If there is a pre-existing group, you can also use that, as well as launch a message from within the group page. It is quite versatile for this.

In Chat

You can create a new group chat, with up to 20 members. You can’t use existing groups for this though and they need to be actively managed by the participants (much like a WhatsApp group)

@Admins can create a chat channel as a formal structure, which uses existing groups and categories to control membership dynamically. This is suitable for something like @NAHSTIG. This functions just like Slack, and allows threads and the like.

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