Broadcast message from server admin to all users?

[Dio]

Hi,

I’ve just set up a chatmail server for testing. First thing, that comes to my mind now: Is it possible to send a broadcast message to all users on the server?
E.g.: “Server will be down for mainteance in the next 2 hours” or even “Server will be shutdown forever, please migrate your stuff!”

Thanks

[ian]

Workarounds:

• ICS
• RSS
• DC broadcast channels (beta)
• allow unencrypted reception (from the operator at least) and then send them a message about it
• the chatmail homepage itself - the operator may disable IMAP for a day every week (or stop receiving new messages other than by the operator) and then most users would probably visit the webpage to see what’s happening
• return IMAP/SMTP errors for some things, but most users won’t be able to find them (in the log or in the message info window)
• Fediverse or any other contact form published on the web page

Duplicate of:

Reliable way for server admin to communicate with his users

Server admin often needs a way to communicate to it’s users, to inform them on server downtimes, policy changs, service termination, etc. AFAIK in case of DC it’s not possible right now. Admin of public chatmail server usually don’t know it’s clients personally, and can’t write to them, despite he has a list of their email addresses. Broadcast messages may be a solution, if all server users will be subscribed right after login creation. But I don’t know if it will be possible at all. Public …

Announcement channels for chatmail

Sometimes server maintainers might like to make announcements to notify users for things like planned maintenance, scheduled downtime, data breaches, etc. Has it been considered giving chatmail server maintainers an easy way to make announcements? Simply mailing every account on the server is one option, but maybe it would be better if Delta Chat checks if an “announcements” file exists on the server and displays the announcements with a nice UI in the app?

[Dio]

Thanks for pointing me to the duplicates.

Some workarounds may or may not work.
IMHO some kind of reliable announcement is really needed when offering a public relay for free. In my experience nothing lasts forever, and if the server should be shut down at some day in the future, it would not be nice doing so without notification.

For my other use cases (private relay for family/friends or for small/medium buisiness) I could happily live without an announcement feature.

[ccclxxiii]

i’ve had good luck with the relays i run by pre-generating broadcast channels and including the link on the main relay page. users are subscribing and as i do maintenance they are aware. that’s the only reasonable working option i’ve found so far.

[Minim]

A built-in option for the admin to send the same unencrypted message to all accounts seems reasonable. Admins who spam users are going to get blocked in the client, and anything sent to all users is not private anyway, nor does it leak any additional data on users.