Predefined Groups possible?

1

Hey,
we are evaluating some messengers for use at our university. A feature we really need: predefined groups.
So for example put all students from the first semester (same course of studies) in one group. This should be done for each semester, so we will use a script or nodeJs or something…
What you think is the best way to predefine groups? (is there an easy way?)
Maybe drop this group information in the DeltaChat folder of the mail clients, so it will be used as soon as the app is installed?

thanks for help

2

The number of recipients of an email is limited, and the member addresses need to be disclosed to allow replying.
So, for this type and size of groups you will certainly have to use a mailinglist server.
Mailinglist groups can be convenient managed centrally, and allow to limit the control and user action confirmation to admins.

Deltachat however has no specific support for interacting with email from mailinglist servers yet.
How well it may work would have to be tested.

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3

In case you are just thinking about groups for just a couple of course members (not all courses together for example), the first message will create the group. You may sent that first message out using a script.

4

We have mailing lists and we have about 60 Group Members max. I will test both of your suggestions. Thanks for your help

5

the largest DC group i use has just below 30 members and works fine. If this is mostly with e-mail addresses from the univerrsity, it might work to go up to 60. Some providers place restrictions on the number of recipients.

There are ways to script groups via chat bots, there are initial efforts in Javascript and Python but they requires hacking yourself, nothing out of the box currently.

6

thanks, good to know. We have full controll over the Email Server, so this should not be the problem. Also we can program some software for automation. :slight_smile:

7

mailing lists flagged as such are not yet supported by delta chat, there is an issue about that, see https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-core/issues/125

i think we should support them better in the future, however, it’s just not done yet :wink:

8

Working on any pending mailinglist support issues in deltachat might be more sustainable than local scripts, of course. :slight_smile:

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9

@cracker0dks
How are your tests going? Would be great if you could let us know.

Maybe if you can try some server filter rules it could solve the current “double notifications” problem for you.
See the “limitations” in [Wiki] IMAP strategy to chat within the email ecosystem and some hints in https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-core/issues/495#issuecomment-480486313

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Very well, but we have only tested the basic functions (On android) without extra scripts or settings. We are impressed how smooth everything works without changing a thing on our mail server.
On wednesday we decided to use DeltaChat as the “official messenger” in the future (we ruled out Threema Work as last candidate).
Now we have to do a lot more testing and a plan how to get a stable operation environment. IOS support is our main concern here.
At this point we will have to look at the “predefined groups” thing again…
If everything is working as expected, we will probably roll out to the stuff members first, then to the about 7000 Students.

PS: We also thinking about a way to change the PC Client into a webclient to support Windows, but everything is very fresh so we need a bit more time to organize :slight_smile:

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11

Whats about fragment a message and send copies to each user or divide it between the maximun users whom anyone could send any message and repeat the message until all people had that message.

Maybe it is not great for very large groups (2000) but about only 100 or similar people it would be great

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A group with pepito, Pepe, jose and sarah. You only could send a message to 3 users at the same time. Client fragment the message and send one to pepito, Pepe and jose and then a copy only to sarah

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@cracker0dks Thanks, good to hear. :slight_smile:

PS:

14

Maybe to resend files this should be charged only to the server. Then, you would have to upload a file again.

Or message could use a redistribute tag and others members would send the copy

15

I really need this, because the Nauta email server at Cuba only allow 20 receipts for each email, so Delta Chat groups can only have 20 members, but this is offtopic here, we should talk about it here:

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@anon93826752 this is not the problem we are facing. Our Server does not have any limitations and we also could change it in that case. Our problem is, we have new students and we want to put them into a predefined group with other students (1. Semester or something). For that we have to find a “best practice” / way

@testbird Thanks for the links. I think webclients is the way to go, I don’t think nativ dektopclients can compete on the long run.

17

Okay. I understood other problem here with an amount of people in the same group but the problem exists.

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18

hello @cracker0dks,
I think you should look from another perspective,
having predefined groups may not be a good solution, you should think what is a group in Delta Chat? a group is made of members, members go in and out, so groups are not something static that you will share with a modified version of Delta Chat, a better solution would be to have a “join bot”, a bot that joins people to the group, so any student can send a message to the bot lets say “join Semester#1” and the bot will join that student to the group, then you spread QR codes and/or mailto-links that make it easy for users to write to this bot with the predefined message

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And sorry, I was talking about general email server of other people.

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I was replying to this