Notifications of new posts and replies not being received
Is it just at my end, or is the system still not sending notifications (emails or texts) to notify of new posts and their replies in the Community groups? I loved that feature in the past, because I was able to know when someone posted a new item, or replied to a previously posted discussion or question in the Community groups. I've got all the boxes checked for notifications in "settings," but I still don't get anything. Any ideas?
-- Chris
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Thank you for asking such an important question.
With the new FamilySearch Community format, we will only get email notifications on items that involve us personally such as:
- A post we made
- A post we commented on
- A post we are tagged in
- Private Messages to us
We are currently not getting notifications on daily, weekly, or every post as we have in the past.
In the meantime, to make sure all available notifications are turned on, please do the following:
- Click on your avatar in the top right corner
- Click on "edit profile"
- Click on "Notification Preferences"
- Check Mark all Notification Preferences
- Click on "Save General Preferences"
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😕
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Heather, any influence you might possibly have would be greatly appreciated. Loss of that notification of new posts severely weakens the usefulness of the Community groups. Personally, like a lot of people, I'm busy enough that I often don't even think about going through the steps to log in and check my subscribed groups to see if there's anything of interest, or something I might want to reply to. I think my mind is still in the old mode of getting posts automatically via email. I could scan the email, decide if I wanted or needed to respond, and simply delete the email if it wasn't relevant for me. I need to do a better job now of checking in with each of my groups - but if someone is subscribed to more than just a few, that could become a time-consuming (and therefore demotivating) task.
And if nobody is getting those notices, then that's potentially a lot of people that might have significant input to new posts - but they don't see them until much later when they just happen to log in and perhaps see them after they've largely become too old to make a difference.
Plus, a new user of the Community might not get a response for quite a while to a really important question they have, leading them to erroneously make the decision to not bother with the groups because they don't seem well read or used (which functionally with the loss of the notifications actually becomes the case). A newer user may not know about the above steps regarding preferences, and therefore not even have set them up to get a notification that a reply they'd actually posted with a question they had.
FYI, I'd personally set up all of my preferences some time ago, checking ALL of them in hopes that something might generate email notifications again. I used to be very active in the FHC tech support group for North America particularly, and have found myself not even checking in to see what's going on there simply because I had too many other things on my mind and didn't think to do so. I just tend to wait for their monthly Zoom meeting, which defeats the Community group process.
I understand the many steps that things like this have to go through, but perhaps with enough input at the right levels, we might be able to have that valuable function restored. Thanks for all you do in so many ways! That's what this work is all about - helping others to improve things around us for everyone.😀👍️
-- Chris
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Hi Chris,
My apologizes that it took some time to get back to you - I just got back into town. Thank you so much for reaching out.
FamilySearch Community truly is aware how much others are wanting this feature to happen, and is working towards a solution. I am going to tag @Caleb L so that he can see your heartfelt concern for others and wanting community to be the best it can be.
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