Communities Notifications communities-notifications

Overview overview

AEM Communities provides a notifications section which displays events of interest to the signed in community member.

Notifications are similar to activities and subscriptions as they may result from:

  • The member posting content.
  • The member choosing to follow another member.
  • The member choosing to follow specific topics, articles and other threads of content.
  • The member tagging (@mention) another community member in a user generated content.

What distinguishes notifications from activities and subscriptions is:

  • A link to the notifications section is always present in a community site’s header:

  • The implementation of notifications is through scalable and pluggable channels:

    • Activities are only available on the web.
    • Subscriptions are only available using email.

As of Communities FP1, the notification channels available are:

  • The web channel, accessed using the Notifications link.
  • The email channel, available when email is properly configured.

Future channels are mobile and desktop.

Requirements requirements

Configure Email

Email must be configured in order for the email channel for notifications to be functional.

For instructions on setting up email, see Configuring Email.

Enable Follow

Components must be configured to enable following. Features that allow following are blog, forum, QnA, calendar, filelibrary, and comments.

Note:

  • Components used within community site templates and group templates may already be configured to follow.

  • Member profiles are already configured to allow other memebers to follow.

Notifications from Following notifications-from-following

notifications

The Follow button provides a means to follow entries as activities, subscriptions and/or notifications. Each time the Follow button is selected, it is possible to toggle on or off a selection. The Email Subscriptions selection is only present when configured.

If any method of following is selected, the text of the button changes to Following. For convenience, it is possible to select Unfollow All to toggle off all methods.

The Follow button will appear:

  • When viewing another member’s profile.

  • On a main feature page, such as forums, QnA, and blogs:

    • Follows all activity for that general feature.
  • For a specific entry, such as a forum topic, QnA question, or blog article:

    • Follows all activity for that specific entry.

Managing Notification Settings managing-notification-settings

By selecting the Notification Settings link from the Notifications page, it is possible for each member to manage how notifications are received.

The web channel is always enabled.

notifications14

The email channel, which relies on proper configuration of email, provides the same settings as for the web channel.

The email channel is off by default.

notifications2

It may be turned on by a member, but still depends on email being configured.

notifications3

Viewing Notifications viewing-notifications

Web Notifications web-notifications

A wizard created community site now includes a link to the Notifications feature in the site’s header bar above the banner. Unlike messages, notifications are created for every community site, while messages must be enabled during the site creation process.

When visiting the published site, selecting the Notifications link will display all notifications for the member.

notifications4

Email Notifications email-notifications

When the email channel is enabled, the member receives an email which contains a link to the content on the web.

notifications5

Customize email notifications customize-email-notifications

Organizations can customize the email notifications by overlaying the templates at /libs/settings/community/templates/email/html.

For example, to modify the mentions emails notifications (for a communities component) add an if condition for verb mention in the templates of the components for which you enabled the @mentions support.

To modify the email notifications template for @mention in blog comments, place out of the box template at: /libs/settings/community/templates/email/html/social.journal.components.hbs.comment/en

{{#equals this.verb "mention"}}\
    A new mention <a href="{{objectUrl}}">comment</a> {{#if this.target.properties.[jcr:title]}}to the article "{{{target.displayName}}}" {{/if}}was added by {{{user.name}}} on {{dateUtil this.published format="EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss z"}}.\n \
{{/equals}}\
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