User Forum > Portal notifications erratic behavior
Hi Darren,
I'm not aware of any reason that portal notifications would get set to "never" without someone explicitly changing them, I'll look into this today. If you have a moment please send me an email (adam at liquidplanner) and let me know which portal members reported this, it might help me track down what's happening.
Adam
I've got to second Darren's feelings on the portals. I've mentioned this a couple of times before but emails from the portal are not reliable, and the idea of globally, and initially setting the default to "never" seems silly.
We've got about 15 different portals now with 10 different clients. They absolutely love the extra contact and space for our project. However, I have to start every portal opening with a disclaimer email stating that a) replies to the portal DO NOT WORK from email clients on iphones, personal mail, etc., and people must go into the portal to make comments, and b) that they MUST set their notifications to "realtime" right away. About half the people get this right and it just gets us off on a bad foot - and makes LP look buggy to the very potential LP clients that this program should be attracting.
What winds up happening when these emails do not go through, or notifications are not updated is crucial client/company transmissions are lost and everyone loses faith in the system.
I know you guys have a lot of your plate - but this is a crucial fix.
Thanks,
Max
Max Kaiser
Just wanted to bump this. Another portal user reported their notification changing to "never" for a project. This was on a project which had been dormant for a while. Is there some reason why the setting would change if the user hasn't logged in to the portal recently?
I'm still hoping for general improvement in the whole communication system, but this particular problem is frustrating. I've basically resorted to sending a follow-up e-mail outside of LP just in case the commenting system doesn't work.
Darren Hendricks
We've been looking at this and have not identified a cause other than a user changing the setting so it would be very helpful if you can send as specific information as possible to support [at] liquidplanner [dot] com. I've passed your latest note to engineering already.
Beyond that we are working on auto-complete in comment fields to help users get the right names when they direct comments with the @ symbol.
Charles Seybold
Ok. I think the problem is that portal users don't understand that the notification setting has to be set for every portal. So when they've set it to "realtime" in one portal, that doesn't change it for all (which makes sense). This just means users have to be educated, I guess.
It would just help things immensely if the default notification setting was not "never." Or if there was an option for users to set a global notification setting for all portals they have access to.
Darren Hendricks
VERY STRANGE!
Logged in this morning and ALL of my portal notifications are now set to NEVER...
Is this true for my clients as well??
Max
Max Kaiser
Darren,
I made some changes so that the default should always be realtime. There were some cases where the default would be be never if you added people to a portal before enabling it, or disabled and then re-enabled it.
Adam
Max,
It shouldn't be, I'll look into it for you though.
Adam
Okay, this is bizarre. Every time I go back to any of my portals they immediately change back to "Never" even though I just reset them...
Max
Max Kaiser
Max,
I'm going to guess that it's a display issue, and that you are in fact subscribed, but that it's just not displaying it properly... I'll see what I can do, and hopefully get a fix out quickly if need be.
Adam
You da man. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy my clients having nothing to say for awhile.
Max
Max Kaiser
Hi Max,
I verified that you are in fact subscribed to all those portals. If it's showing you as not being subscribed, that's a bug on my part, but purely cosmetic. I'll keep on digging into it.
Adam
Hi Max,
I tracked down the bug and fixed it.
As an alternative, if you want to keep track of activity in your portals, you can always just 'watch' the project, which will notify you of any changes in it.
Adam
Adam, thanks - yes it seems to still be notifying. Man, I can't tell you how much we use this feature!
Max Kaiser
I've been getting reports from multiple portal users that they're periodically not receiving e-mail notifications of portal changes, even when they've selected "real time" in the portal. Others have reported that the notification setting has mysteriously reverted on it's own to "never." We need to be confident that portal users are receiving all messages and notifications, and the current system is not facilitating that. The messaging and notification system in LP continues to be the weak link in an otherwise great system. Hopefully some changes to this area are forthcoming soon.