taylordaughtry / craft-brief

Quick, easy, and customizable user-group notifications for Craft CMS.

Brief adds notification functionality to your Craft site. It's maintained by Taylor Daughtry.

Features

• Control who gets notifications with Craft's native User Groups
• Customize the email's suject with dynamic titles
• Select who gets notifications for any section, or just a few sections
• Notify Slack channels when a section is updated with new or edited entries

Installation

To install Brief, just follow these steps:

1. Upload the brief/ folder to your craft/plugins/ folder.
2. Go to Settings > Plugins from your Craft control panel and enable the Brief plugin.
3. Click the gear icon next to the uninstall button, and add your settings.
4. Click 'Save'. You're done!

Any users in your selected group will now receive email notifications when a new entry is added to your section. If you add new users to that group, Brief will add them to the notification list automatically; you don't need to do anything else.

How does it work?

Every time an entry is saved, Brief checks whether it's in the section you've specified. If it is, and the entry is enabled, Brief sends a notification email to the User Group you've selected. Note that it's a very light check to see if the saved entry is in your section; you won't have any performance issues if you're saving tons of entries everyday.

Usage

In Brief's settings, specify which section you'd like to be notified about. For example, if you'd like to be notified when an entry is updated or deleted in the 'News' section, you'd select News from the dropdown.

Also be sure and select a User Group. If you don't have any, Brief will ask you to go create one. If you don't have user groups and still try to use Brief, it won't send any emails so you don't inadvertently email every user on the site.

Custom Email Templates

Brief supports custom email templates. If you'd like to use one, just specify the template in Brief's settings, and Brief will render your template and send it.

You'll have access to the entry variable within any template you choose to render.

Slack Integration

Brief has Slack integration. Just paste your Slack webhook into Brief's settings, and we'll notify your selected Slack Channel whenever there's an update.

You can get a webhook for your team by going to your team's Apps & Custom Integrations page and creating a Custom Integration (Incoming Webhook). Select the channel you'd like to post to, then copy the Webhook URL provided.

Paste that URL into Brief's settings, and it'll let you know when entries are added/updated in your specified section.

Feature Requests & Issues

If you need a feature, let me know and I'll add it as soon as reasonably possible. Brief is actively maintained, and I accept relevant, feature-adding pull requests. If you encounter any issues, please open an issue and I'll work with you and patch the problem. Thanks!

Feature Roadmap

• Add email templates from ThemeForest, CodeCanyon, and elsewhere that work with Brief automatically
• Specify whether you'd like notifications for any entry, or just new ones.

craft-brief's Issues

Improper dynamic data in email body

I love this plugin but the email body says:

Hey, there! There's been an update or addition to the News Section

Although the Subject says "Signup - Listings Signup".

Shouldn't the body say "Hey, there! There's been an update or addition to the Signup - Listings Signup"?

Error after installing

After I've uploaded the plugin I navigated to the plugin section to find this error:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '.', expecting ',' or ';' in …/craft/plugins/brief/BriefPlugin.php on line 13

Cheers
Stefan

Correct the MSO link address.

It's still a placeholder link.

Multiple notifications?

Does this support multiple sections notifying groups?

Notify group(s) when a new user is created.

Add optional 'Digest' option for busy websites.

Enabling this would prevent emails from being sent on every entry modification or addition. Instead, it would wait until a time that you set, then send a 'Digest' email with a list of changes that happened in that Channel.

You'd have two options: Send as Digest and Wait Period.

Notification is send, even if the post is still in draft

When a post is saved, even without publishing, a notification is send.
If it's possible, there should be a check if a post is still in draft.

thx :)

Notify users when a form is submitted.

Add pretty notification emails.

I'm a huge fan of awesome email design. You'll have a few options to choose from (other than your own customizable ones) in the next version.

Allow the option to directly notify users instead of specifying a User Group.

Use Case: I need to send a notification email when an entry is being created by the front-end. I don't want notifications to be sent when any other action is made in the Section.

This will likely involved conditionalizing BriefService.php on line 31 or so such that it just send notifications if a certain parameter is passed.

Craft 3?

Just wondering if a Craft 3 version is on the way... And if so, when do you estimate it'll be available?

Thanks!

Add ability to check if the item triggering notification is related to the user

I'd love a way to check to see if the item that is triggering the notification is related to the user. I've got a simple discussion community set up and would love to be able to trigger notifications based on whether it's from a topic that the user has posted in.

Add support for Slack notifications on form submissions and section/entry updates.

Where do I Select a Section?

Hi,

I am trying to use your plugin to notify users when an entry is saved in a specific section.

In your documentation, it says "In Brief's settings, specify which section you'd like to be notified about. For example, if you'd like to be notified when an entry is updated or deleted in the 'News' section, you'd select News from the dropdown."

But I seen no dropdown, as shown below:

Is there any thing I'm missing?

Thank You

FR: Custom notification based on entry field

Hi Taylor,

great plugin, and I see you are very active with FR, we really appreciate that.

I know I'm pushing the limits maybe, I have a registration form, and would like to send a copy of "thanks for subscribing" to the user that created the entry (guest). Is there a workaround I can do with latest 1.5.0 version?

Thanks

Notify per entry

Is it possible to notify someone who's subscribed to an entry? They'd be logged in, click a button and then when it's edited, it'll email them?

Maybe the subscription adds them to the group, but its per entry not per section.

Saving an entry without User Groups calls userGroups(), which doesn't exist.

Because there are no groups defined in the system, craft()->userGroups is null. Place a try/catch block around it or use Brief's service call to get them. Add the $group->id to the return value; it's need in the on.SaveEntry method.

Add an optional reply-to option

It would be nice to have the option to set an optional reply-to email address. Eg. using a {{field}} value if it contains a valid email address.

Error when using {{ title }} in the email subject input

When setting this up, if I enter anything with curly brackets, such as {{ title }}, into the email subject input, it throws an error, which breaks the entire /plugins page. I'm having to restore my database from a backup to clear it out in order to reset the plugin and try again. Deleting the plug and replacing it with a fresh copy doesn't clear the error.

Running Craft v. 2.6.2944

PHP notice: Array to string conversion

Add 'API' like functionality

I would love to see API functionality like being able as a logged in user to fetch new events via ajax in a polling interval and displaying those as pop-ups on site (to moderators/administrators. Something like "New post awaiting moderation").
I still have to take a look at the code to see if it would be possible with with the infrastructure of the plugin. If it's fire-and-forget (which I unfortunately assume it is) it probably wouldn't be possible, but if it's already stored somewhere it should be 'easily' achievable.

Add ability to notify on saved but not enabled entries too

I am using P&T's GuestEntry plugin to create disabled (="not published") Quote entries whenever a visitor asks a quote. These entries are created successfully but notification is only sent if they are created as enabled. Is it possible to send notifications for disabled entries?

Include user info in body?

Hi There!

Great plugin!
I want to include the name of the receiver into the e-mail body.

I tried to manage that with the BriefService.php. But still no succes.
Can you help me, of handle me an example?

When i try to read the user's name, it keeps saying the CP admin name.

Thank you!

Greetings,
Bodil Seekles
Bubblefish Interactive

Error in settings if no groups exist

Hi,

if I don't have any groups created, function getGroups() returns error

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hhzvbcw91itm7ht/Screenshot%202016-02-09%2023.42.25.png?dl=0

After that is needed to disable the plugin in craft_plugins table and then create group and activate the plugin.

thanks
davor

Could not instantiate mail function when using craftman Docker-based tool

I got the following error:

Craft\Exception
E-mail error: Could not instantiate mail function

I am using craftman (https://github.com/gabrielmoreira/craftman), my Craft site is now running in a Docker container.

/var/www/craft/app/services/EmailService.php(475)

if ($errorMessage)
466             {
467                 // Fire an 'onSendEmailError' event
468                 $this->onSendEmailError(new Event($this, array(
469                     'user' => $user,
470                     'emailModel' => $emailModel,
471                     'variables' => $variables,
472                     'error' => $errorMessage,
473                 )));
474 
475                 throw new Exception(Craft::t('Email error: {error}', array('error' => $errorMessage)));
476             }
477 

Craft_Exception.pdf

Update to 2.0.1 breaks admin/settings

Internal error
"Array to string conversion"

GET https://webmenedzser.hu/admin/settings 500 ()
craft.js:5 Uncaught ReferenceError: Craft is not defined
at craft.js:5
at craft.js:17607
(anonymous) @ craft.js:5
(anonymous) @ craft.js:17607
cp.js:7 Uncaught ReferenceError: Craft is not defined
at cp.js:7
at cp.js:1484
(anonymous) @ cp.js:7
(anonymous) @ cp.js:1484
settings.js:4 Uncaught ReferenceError: Craft is not defined
at settings.js:4
at settings.js:241
(anonymous) @ settings.js:4
(anonymous) @ settings.js:241
settings:52 Uncaught ReferenceError: Craft is not defined
at settings:52

Adding this to /craft/plugins breaks site

This had been working fine, but now it's completely breaking our site. Just adding it to the plugins directory, not even installing it, takes down the entire site.

Feature Request

Get notified when an entry is edited.

I am using Craft as a project / client manager. Entries are "Clients" and are updated periodically.

Doesn't notify for new disabled entries, no matter toggle status.

The disabled notification toggle doesn't result in getting notifications when disabled entries are posted; which is what I'd expect it to do.

I "fixed this" for our particular use by removing the three-line check in the Plugin file. Looks like the conditional is not what it ought to be.

Allow the notification email's subject to be modified.

Right now it's just 'New Entry in {section}'. Should be modifiable in plugin Settings.