Reset notifications (for all) is not working

Macondiana · August 31, 2015 at 7:22 PM

I can change my test user email for forum topic replies to receive emails and then log into my admin account and under Users/default Notifications. Reset all to get no emails for anything and see the test user is still showing receiving emails for forum topic replies.

This was brought up here on TAZ forum.

https://theadminzone.com/threads/should…14#post-1005301

Macondiana · August 31, 2015 at 11:10 PM

No comment on this? Only takes 5 minutes to test it for yourselves.

Black Rider · August 31, 2015 at 11:11 PM

I think nearly no issue, which is not highly important, is tested immediately.

Please be patient.

**Alexander Ebert** · September 3, 2015 at 1:59 PM Official Post

I can't reproduce this with Burning Board 4.1.6 nor 4.1.7, no matter which notification setting I'm changing, it does overwrite the user's preferences if it was chosen to do so.

Please notice that there is an exception to this, it will only overwrite a setting if it differs to the previous default values. Let's say there are two notifications A and B:

Default value for notification A and B is "disabled"
A user edits their own settings and enables notification B
The admin now changes the default settings and sets notification A to enabled, while B will still remain disabled and chooses to overwrite user settings
The user now has notification A and B enabled (default values now: A enabled, B disabled)
B is still enabled for the user because the default value for notification B was not changed and therefore has been skipped

This mechanism is in place to avoid messing up all notification settings just because an administrator chose to change a single default value.

Macondiana · September 3, 2015 at 4:14 PM

1. I logged into a test member account called Tester and changed notification under forum to receive "instant emal notifications" from none (no email notifications).

2. Then logged out that account and into my admin one and changed notifications for all users to be none for everything (you can see that forum setting is set to change the test users account back to no email notifications. Well actually, I didn't change any drown down notifications settings in admin panel because they was already set from before with all to receive no emails. All I needed do was tick the box "apply for all" and save it.

3. I logged out my admin account and back into the test user account and checked my notification settings and it still shows "instant email notifications", so it wasn't reset back to none.

In the admin panel nothing was changed in the drop down notification settings because it was already set that way by from before

Macondiana · September 3, 2015 at 4:28 PM

Could it be because in the admin panel I already had all notifications setup to "no email" from previously, meaning that no drop down box was changed this time, only APPLY TO ALL box was ticked. That no changed in a drop down notification setting was detected as changed when saved.

Try doing this:

1. Go into admin panel and change all notification settings to "receive no email" and save.
2. Go into a test user account and change one to "receive instant email"
3. Go back into admin panel again and this time all you need to do is tick the box "apply to all" and save.
4. Check the users account now to see if a change was made back to "no email notifications".

**Alexander Ebert** · September 3, 2015 at 5:10 PM Official Post

And that's the issue, you haven't made any changes to the default values. You have basically submitted the form with the same exact values, therefore no action was actually taken, only modified values are applied. Please see my post above for a detailed explanation.

Macondiana · September 3, 2015 at 5:38 PM

Had a feeling that might be what is going on. But then that means if wanting to reset all users to No email. Then I have to change it to anything else first (if already set at no email), then go back a second time and change it back to no email again. I would have though you could just tick apply all box it would still change values without you having to do something like that.

**Alexander Ebert** · September 3, 2015 at 8:53 PM Official Post

Quote from GTB

Had a feeling that might be what is going on. But then that means if wanting to reset all users to No email. Then I have to change it to anything else first (if already set at no email), then go back a second time and change it back to no email again. I would have though you could just tick apply all box it would still change values without you having to do something like that.

I admit that the function's behavior is not crystal clear and is something we should improve in the future. Besides that it is intended to quickly provide sane default values for new notifications (e.g. delivered by a plugin) and is not meant to randomly mess with all notifications settings. Don't get me wrong of this, your use case is valid and I'm not saying anything against it, but it is not the average case which this function is intended for.

Bottom line: The feature's behavior is not ideal and this should and most likely will be addressed in the future.

Participate now!