Feedback / Suggestion: Ability to Send Email Notice

Just signed in and tested the beta release of Newsletter app and I can tell it is going to be great.

Early feedback:

The ability to check a field to send an email notice to subscribers, or those in the unit or stake, when new content is published would be fantastic.

Picture a regularly scheduled monthly post in a true 'newsletter' type fashion that is posted on the blog, but then lands in peoples' inboxes after published.

Or to those subscribed to certain categories to let them know if a new article is published within their subscribed category. They can also choose how often they want emails: Immediately, Daily Digest or Weekly Digest.

There's currently no concept of "subscriber" in the Newsletter application, so this is a big change. Personally, I like the suggestions made in the thread Feature: Subscribing to Newsletter for adding RSS feeds so that people can control their subscriptions through an existing industry standard.

aebrown wrote:There's currently no concept of "subscriber" in the Newsletter application, so this is a big change. Personally, I like the suggestions made in the thread Feature: Subscribing to Newsletter for adding RSS feeds so that people can control their subscriptions through an existing industry standard.

There are privacy issues with using an RSS feed, in that all RSS feeds are public. (I mentioned that in the thread you linked above). And of course, the task of subscribing to an RSS feed may be complex to some people, so it would be nice to have at least the option of receiving email notifications for "subscribed categories."

Perhaps subscriptions should be considered a user preferences option that spans the LDS Tools more globally... users would be able to update their account preferences for subscription emails that apply to Calendars, Lesson Schedule changes, Newsletter category updates, etc. all in one place or individually at each of those tools.

failproof wrote:Perhaps subscriptions should be considered a user preferences option that spans the LDS Tools more globally...

Just to be clear LDS Tools is a mobile application. To avoid confusion the applications currently available through the LDS.org Tools menu should not be referred to as LDS Tools.

failproof wrote:users would be able to update their account preferences for subscription emails that apply to Calendars, Lesson Schedule changes, Newsletter category updates, etc. all in one place or individually at each of those tools.

If subscriptions were to be applied to the groups in the Newsletter I would want those subscriptions to remain separate from my preferences for the Calendar or any other program that would eventually incorporate anything related to notices being sent for changes or additions.

aebrown wrote:There's currently no concept of "subscriber" in the Newsletter application, so this is a big change. Personally, I like the suggestions made in the thread Feature: Subscribing to Newsletter for adding RSS feeds so that people can control their subscriptions through an existing industry standard.

While I agree the RSS subscription option would be great for those that understand how to use RSS, but for the majority of individuals they have no clue what it means or how to even use it. And AileneRHerrick brings up a good point below that RSS feeds generally have to be public to work simply as private feeds are cumbersome.

I'd just like to echo what was said above. Only the most geeky know RSS anyway. LDS.org is woefully missing the ability to email the ward members by a member of the bishopric. At least that I an see. We had a huge storm here last night and I want to email everyone in our ward (I'm the bishop), but I can't seem to find a way to do that. The newsletter app seems like a likely way we can create this capability that would allow folks to unregister themselves from everything, or just certain categories.

I'd love to be able to add my whole ward as subscribers and send them a custom welcome email that explains how they can unsubscribe themselves from certain categories, or subscribe to others to get news from the ward. This would help us communicate much better, and more focused as well. I could send out a note from the bishopric in the bishopric category. Young Men could post to the young men category and those subscribed to that would get that update. You get the idea.

Perhaps there is a listserv in progress somewhere else. That would be awesome too!

jeffvand wrote:LDS.org is woefully missing the ability to email the ward members by a member of the bishopric. At least that I an see. We had a huge storm here last night and I want to email everyone in our ward (I'm the bishop), but I can't seem to find a way to do that.

As bishop you can send email to various groups of ward members by using the Send a Message button in the toolbar of the Leader Resources page (http://lds.org/leader) or by going directly to http://lds.org/messaging. Ward clerks also have this ability. I don't think that assistant clerks do (but I'm not sure about that).

Although email notification for the newsletter would be a good thing, the messaging app is better for general emails. It doesn't require members to do anything other than include their email address on church records.

eblood66 wrote:As bishop you can send email to various groups of ward members by using the Send a Message button in the toolbar of the Leader Resources page (http://lds.org/leader) or by going directly to http://lds.org/messaging. Ward clerks also have this ability. I don't think that assistant clerks do (but I'm not sure about that).

Holy cow! That's awesome! Thank you so much for pointing me to this! I really appreciate it! This is just what I needed!

jdlessley wrote:Just to be clear LDS Tools is a mobile application. To avoid confusion the applications currently available through the LDS.org Tools menu should not be referred to as LDS Tools.

OK, good point, not intending to confuse these pages with the mobile apps, but you are missing my point... you still use the same LDS Account for access/security/preferences/etc. My point thus being that preferences would be global across all the LDS Account enabled applications, web pages, etc.

jdlessley wrote:If subscriptions were to be applied to the groups in the Newsletter I would want those subscriptions to remain separate from my preferences for the Calendar or any other program that would eventually incorporate anything related to notices being sent for changes or additions.

You are missing the vision I had of this though (and probably my fault for not being more clear) - You wouldn't set one simple "send me email updates" field. You would have a list in your preferences, broken up by application/tool, then by category/calendar/etc. that would allow you, in one location, to set your notification preferences for all LDS applications and tools. Your News letter preferences would still be separate from your calendar preferences, but the LDS applications would all draw their user preferences from a single database rather than the having separate preferences databases for each application. And for the user, you can turn on and off your notifications for all the applications in one place. Likely not an easy thing to implement for the developers, but not everything worth doing is easy...

@failproof
Your recommendation is posted in a thread specific to an application, Newsletter, and more specifically in a thread who's topic is in regard to sending e-mail notices from within that application. Any discussion in this thread should focus on the original post topic. If you wish to discuss LDS Account credentialing and user preferences for multiple online applications then a new thread in the LDS.ORG Web Site forum would be more appropriate.

@jdlessley
I appreciate your feedback, it is a good suggestion, definitely worth a new thread in the other forum. But keep in mind, it does apply to this thread as well, since the concept being suggested here is about email and subscribing to categories/topics within the newsletter, a concept which doesn't currently exist for newsletter. My suggestion is just a little more broad saying yes give us the ability to subscribe to a given newsletter thread but also make it so that I don't have to go to each application to adjust my subscriptions, make it something that applies to newsletters, calendars, and potentially more and give me the ability to manage it from my LDS Account profile.

failproof wrote:You are missing the vision I had of this though (and probably my fault for not being more clear) - You wouldn't set one simple "send me email updates" field. You would have a list in your preferences, broken up by application/tool, then by category/calendar/etc. that would allow you, in one location, to set your notification preferences for all LDS applications and tools. Your News letter preferences would still be separate from your calendar preferences, but the LDS applications would all draw their user preferences from a single database rather than the having separate preferences databases for each application. And for the user, you can turn on and off your notifications for all the applications in one place. Likely not an easy thing to implement for the developers, but not everything worth doing is easy...

I think the LDS Account team is working on something like this -- a place where users can globally define preferences for all LDS applications. I'm not sure of the details or the expected go-live date, but some kind of global identity management system is being worked on, and it would probably include e-mail preferences for applications.