Okay I maybe a 'wee' bit computer literate but what the heck's a IFTTT?

(:>J

John Mc,

> Has there been any thought/discussion to add one (or more) fields to
> the member information?

There is one "extra" field. If you open a member's page there's the "Notes" tab.

Alas, that feature is rather out-of-sight-out-of-mind right now, there's no indication given in the list that it holds content, and there are no notifications when a moderator updates that field. At least the update does get logged in the Moderator Activity log.

> Not trying to turn the member list into a full-out database - but for
> some lists it's nice to have one more bit of information about a
> person.? ?What street you live on for the neighborhood list.? What
> your plot number is for the community garden list.? ?Stuff like that.

I've often wished for functionality like this, but I've never come up with a proposed "best" way to do it.

Just adding more fields to the Members list is one approach. But it can make that list cluttered, which could ultimately be an impediment to its primary use cases. Maybe there would be a clever way to manage what is shown when there are too many columns to fit the user's window; a bit like Excel's split and/or freeze features.

I've also thought of having it be another selector, "Notes", in the Members list view button that currently selects Members, Moderators, Pending, Bouncing, or Banned. When "Notes" is selected then the custom fields are shown rather than the standard fields. But I think you'd have to have at least the email field automatically included, or both email and Display name. So you rapidly run into the same width problem as having them in the primary members list.

A pro or con of those ideas (depending on your use case) is that it would be available only to moderators.

Possibly one could do a similar thing built on the member Directory so that it could be made available to members if desired. In my classmate groups it would be desirable to allow members to add their current address, phone number, nick-name in school, activities, or other information to help everyone remember them. Even a second "then" picture to go with their current profile photo/avatar.

> Couldn't find anything searching old topics - is this wish list
> worthy?

I'd say yes. We could kick it around here some more if you like, or just go for it in beta.

Shal

Michael,

> So the quick answer to this is that it works. If you add someone as a
> user through the normal process but use phonenumber@carrier then they
> will receive text messages when a post is made.

Excellent!

> However, you cannot reply via text, it gets rejected by Groups.io. I
> assume because it's missing all the email headers.

The key is the "From" address. It must match the subscribed address or else the reply will be rejected as "not a member" (unless your group allows non-members to post). If that's what happened you should see a "Non-member" entry in the group's Message Activity log for the attempt.

If you find that entry make note of the exact email address reported. You can (when logged in under the subscribed address) add that sending address as an Email Alias on the Subscribed address' Account page, Login section. It is under the "Advanced Settings" expander at the bottom.

If the email gateway always sends replies with that same address then those should post as if posted under the subscribed address.

> You can, however, click on the "View/Reply Online" link and reply in a
> mobile web browser.

If your device has a mobile web browser it may be fair to ask why you're bothering with SMS rather than just using an email service. But to each his own.? ;-)

Shal

OK, thanks again. We may give it a try.

Michael Vorkapich

On Wed, Jan 10, 2018 at 12:32 PM, Shal Farley <shals2nd@...> wrote:

Michael,

> Do you know if using email to text would work? ie
> 1234567890@... ?

I don't know.

It has been ages (when I owned a basic flip-phone) since I've tried using a carrier's SMS gateway with an email list (a Yahoo Group). I seem to recall that I made it work, sort-of, but it wasn't very useful. Something like the 160 character limit was all consumed by the email address and other stuff, leaving no room for the message text itself.

In Groups.io the first challenge would be getting the gateway address confirmed - you'd have to be able to reply to the confirmation message and I think that was a sticking point. Or, if you have a premium group you could avoid that problem by using Direct Add.

If you run the experiment and get a useful result that would be a nice how-to article to post here, and/or in GMF's Wiki.

Shal