Emailing the users of a project

Question

Continuing the discussion from Messaging Service for Paratext:

Messaging Service for Paratext

(Milt , TSC, writes)

Email is not an effective way to communicate with teams in Nigeria and it is difficult to call everyone on the phone.

Sometimes email is a good way to communicate, and I’d like a feature where you can send an email to every user of a given project (or every Translator, Observer, etc.)

Of course, I could create mailing lists in my email client (and I have created some), but every time I add a user to the project I will have to update multiple mailing lists as well. If the feature were built in to PT, it would save that work.

Answer 1

This is, currently, beyond the scope of what Paratext is designed to handle. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel. Thus it is unlikely that having Paratext send out e-mails would happen.

Comments

If emailing is beyond the scope of PT, what about a feature to copy the email addresses of the users of a project to the clipboard? Then they could be pasted into an email client.

The transition to PT8 has made me think about this again: when an administrator wants to migrate a project to PT8, they need to inform the users that, if they want to keep seeing the latest version, they need to get the project in PT8; and inform those who can make changes to the project that they must stop doing this before the migration, so and S/R, and not make any changes after the migration.

Some projects have scores of users, and what’s more, the administrator doesn’t have access to the users’ email addresses unless he knows them all by another route. This might be particularly relevant for projects that have more than one administrator: if one admin adds some users and later another admin needs to contact those users, the first admin may not be available to supply the addresses of those they added.

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wdavidhj:

If emailing is beyond the scope of PT, what about a feature to copy the email addresses of the users of a project to the clipboard?

Paratext does not know the e-mail addresses of the users, so we’d have to figure out how it might work.
Paratext might be able to get the e-mail addresses from the Registry, but, in this day and age, we need to worry about privacy concerns more than technical concerns. I know I wouldn’t want someone with access to a project I’m a part of to be able to see my e-mail address. Theoretically, anyone could find out the e-mail address of anyone else in Paratext, then, by adding their name to the project temporarily.

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anon291708:

in this day and age, we need to worry about privacy concerns more than technical concerns.

Yes, that’s a very valid point.

Still wish there was a solution to my problem, though . What if the Registry webpage was able to email the users of a project (without showing those addresses to the user sending the message)?