idea for new whisper feature for vanilla

Hamed

idea for new whisper feature for vanilla maybe the next release of vanilla, we can have a whisper system that we can whisper between more than 2 ppl like whisper between only 3 people or 4 or the number of users you enter in the whisper box separated by a comma what do u think?

sirlancelot

Seconded! This is definitely needed. However, seeing as it is a feature, it will probably not be added until the next major release of Vanilla

Vanilla 1.2?

Hamed

oh yeah you are prabably right but yeah i hope this comes it will be a really cool feature to have and awesome one

Hamed

does anyone else like this idea?

fysicsluvr

this is freaking awesome!

fysicsluvr

oooooh oooooh oooooooh and it could be a role based whisper too, like whisper to: admin, etc.

Fyorl

So would they work just like 'private' discussions with only a certain number of people/roles allowed to post? Or would this be available in normal discussions too but just so you send a whisper to more than one person. IMO, just private discussions would be easier to implement but the second one can be handled too. I'd offer to write an extension but I'm still working on a certain secret project.

Hamed

yeah it would like just like normal whisper
there should not be a difference, except in the discussion it now says for example
whisper to Fyorl, fysicsluvr, sirlancelot, hamed

and maybe the admin could edit the max number of people he can whisper to at one time

and yeah fysicsluvr has a good idea too
it could be role based
yeah

Fyorl

It's definitely possible...

timfire

The idea has come up before, though nothing has come of it.

Filtering such whispers would be easy. You could create a couple tables, like, DiscussionIsWhisper & CommentIsWhisper, each with two columns, UserID & DiscussionD/CommentID (respectively). You then add the tables to the discussion/comment query and filter out discussions/comments that are whispers (that have an entry) and don't have the User's ID.

There's some question to whether you would want to augment the whisper system for saving & such, or whether you would want to bypass the whisper system and create a parallel system for saving. The whisper system is hard-wired in, so it creates some technical issues with augmenting it...

My guess would be you could have the User enter all whisper-to usernames in the normal field, seperated by commas. Then, pre-save, you seperate/expode the username field, make the *IsWhisper entries, and then erase the username field. (This would save the discussion as a non-whisper, but since it would have a *IsWhisper entry, it would get filtered out of queries.) When loading a discussion/comment, you would then insert the the multiple whisper usernames as a single string/username... I think that all would work...

Hamed

oh yeah i just realized
it should look different on the outside too
you know how a whisper discussion normally says
[private]
well this one should say [multi-private]
something like that so the other member(s) who read it know they are not the only one being talked too

do you guys understand what i am saying?
or am I being confusing?

Fyorl

No, I understand. Although I think it would be better if it just used [Private:] and then followed with a list of users who could read it.

Hamed

yeah maybe i don't know
but maybe
i still don't know
the idea just came to me that we should indicate that somehow

also once you send a whisper discussion to 1 person you cannot edit it so you can have more than that person on there
and if you have entered whisper to : hamed, Fyorl
you cannot edit it to make it only whisper to: Hamed
what do you think?

Hamed

any one else like the idea?

garvin

I'm not sure if this will add anything to the current conversation, but I'm going to try and relate what I'm doing and hopefully give you some ideas.

I'm using one of my installs as a project management area for us to communicate with clients. We have set up a group of administrators who have the ability "All whispers visible," amongst other things, but that's the key to this. All of our discussions are started by us as whispers to the client. That way clients only see their whispers, and we only had to create a few categories (Designs, Maintenance, Technical Support) so that everything keeps organized vs. creating a category per client (100+ categories would have been difficult to maintain). So, with that type of setup and giving some users with the ability of "All whispers visible" you can whisper to a group. You would just need to set up a category specifically for that group.

We have a client (user a) who basically is the middleman between his 3-4 customers (users b,c,d,e). So, we set up a category (such as "Client a's Area") and gave user a access only to that category and All whispers visible. Then we created a similar role for users b,c,d, and e so that they could only access that one category. We whispered one discussion to each b,c,d,e - basically, using the same setup as we do for all of our clients. Now, user a has the ability to manage a project, both by monitoring it and posting himself in those areas, even though they are whispers to other people.

So - basically, yes - you're idea is a good one. However, it is possible to obtain what you are looking for without adding new pieces to the puzzle. Obviously, your set up is probably different so this might need to be tweaked a bit to fit better into how you do things. But, its an idea.

timfire

I looked into this awhile ago. It is possible, of course, but it would require the extension programmer to bypass the entire whisper system and rewrite a new one. Because of the way the various whisper functions are hard-coded, it simply won't allow multiple-whispers (I forget exactly what was the issue, it was awhile ago). So unfortunately, you're talking more programming work. Potentially there might also be some issues with integrating both the old whisper system (you don't want to erase or expose old whispers) and the new system.

Hamed

oh i see yeah i guess that would be a big huge job maybe they could have this for the vanilla 2

rakel

Garvin,

Thank you so much for your post. This is exactly what I would like to do with Vanilla and wasn't sure that it was possible. Is "All Whispers Visible" a mod that I need to install? Also, just out of curiosity, how do you allow user a to be limited to a certain category (client A's area)? I haven't figured that out yet.