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SMF has a powerful system of managing personal messages. Personal messages (or PMs for short) are like posts, but instead of being posted in a topic they are sent to one or more members. Typically, personal messages are private correspondence and they are viewable only by the sender and intended recipients - administrators cannot view these personal messages except through the database.
Personal messages cannot be sent by guests or to guests. However, if the sender is deleted sometime after they send the message, they will appear as a guest.
By default, 4,294,967,296 personal messages may be sent on a forum. Since this is a much larger number than the members you can have, it's unlikely you will ever reach it. The number of messages which can be stored by a forum member may be restricted by the administrator, who can change this setting by modifying individual membergroups.
My Messages
Upon clicking the My Messages link on the Main menu you will be lead to a page that lists all of the personal messages sent to you. This is your inbox as you can see from the navigation at the top, the default page loaded for personal messages.
At the top of the page you will see something that looks similar to what you would see on the message index of a board. You will see a listing of your personal messages. The first column where you see a speech bubble lets you know if you have replied to the PM. An arrow on the image means that you have replied to the PM; no arrow means that you have not. The second column is for the date the personal message was sent. Next to that is the subject of the message. To the right of that is the display name of the member that sent it. The final column has check boxes where you can select the ones you want to delete and then push the Delete Selected button located under the list of messages. You can sort personal messages by date, subject, or sender.
Upon clicking on any personal message, you will be anchored down the same page to the actual written message. This will look just like how a post would look inside of a topic. Next to each message you will see links on the top right to: quote the message in a reply by clicking Quote, reply to the message by clicking Reply, and delete the message by clicking Remove. Also, you can report abusive personal messages to the administrator by clicking the Report to Admin link at the bottom right of the message, providing that this function has been enabled by the administrator. The checkboxes located farthest to the top right are also used to delete messages upon clicking the Delete Selected button below the messages.
To view sent messages, select "Sent Items" under "Messages" in the button menu or left side panel. Messages are saved to "Sent Items" only if you have put a checkmark next to Save a copy in my outbox before sending the message.
Options
See the Personal Message Options section of the profile.
Privacy
By default, there is no way an administrator or anyone else can read your personal messages. Only you and the person you sent it to are able to read what you wrote. However, it is not impossible for one with access to the database of the forum to read them through the database with an SQL command. For this reason, it is advised to not send personal messages that contain private information that you do not wish for anyone else to read.
Sending a Personal Message
- Enter the name or the names of the person(s) you are sending it to in the To box (the Bcc box can be used to conceal additional recipients of the message). To send messages to multiple users, either use commas (for example: user1, user2), or type the username of each member to whom you wish to send the message, and then select their username from the drop down menu.
- Enter the subject in the subject box.
- Write your message in the box below. Basic BB Codes work the same for Personal Messages as they do for posting.
- When you are finished with your message, push the 'Send Message' button to send or the 'Preview' to preview.
You can also reply to messages using the same method.
Label System
To keep better control and organization of your personal messages, in SMF we introduced a method for you to apply labels to your messages. When you apply a label you will then be able to view just the personal messages with that label. All of your labels will be listed on the left menu under the category Labels. To manage your labels so you can edit label names, delete labels and create new ones, go to the left menu under the category Preferences and click on Manage Labels.
Personal Messages Categories
There are three categories on the Personal Messages page, each of which incorporates a number of different functions.
Messages
- New Message - Select this if you want to create a new message to send to another user as explained above.
- Inbox - Shows all the messages currently in your inbox. The options for this can be changed as explained on the personal messaging options section of the profile page.
- Sent Items - Shows all the messages which you have sent to other members of the forum. Sent messages are saved automatically only if you select the option Save a copy of each personal message in my sent items by default in the profile options. Otherwise, it is necessary to select Save a copy in my outbox each time when sending a message.
Actions
- Search - Selecting this allows you to search your received messages in a similar way as using the advanced search function. You cannot search your sent messages.
- Prune Messages - This allows you to delete all messages that are older than the specified number of days.
Preferences
- Manage Labels - Selecting this allows you to add, edit and delete any labels which you have applied to your messages.
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The following applies only to version 2.0 |
- Manage Rules - Selecting this allows you to have your messages sorted automatically, according to a set of rules which you create. To create a rule select Add New rule, and this takes you to a series of drop down menus where you can set up any rules you wish to apply to messages from specific users, and/or the message title and/or body. Multiple criteria can be chosen by selecting Add Criteria. You can also choose whether all or any of the criteria must be met using the dropdown menu. Finally, you can select the action which will be taken with messages to which a rule is applied. Again, you can choose more than one action by selecting Add Action.
- Change Settings - The first two options address how private messages are displayed:
If a member chooses All at once, a list of messages is displayed at the top with all of those messages displayed below the list. Selecting One at a time results in only one message being displayed at the top with a list of messages below it. As a conversation mimics the forum functionality, creating a topic-like list of replies, it is highly recommended that a member saves their messages in their outbox if they choose to display messages as a conversation.
The second option controls the order in which the messages are displayed.
Members may control who is allowed to send them private messages. It can be limited to members not on their ignore list, buddies and administrators, or only administrators.
Notifications may be enabled in order to receive emails when private messages are received on the forum. Additionally, a popup message may also be enabled to notify a member of new messages.
The last two available settings are the following:
- Save a copy of each personal message in my outbox by default - When sending a message, a copy of it is saved in a member's outbox automatically. This option should be enabled when viewing messages as a conversation.
- Remove the inbox label when applying another label - When a new label is applied to a message, the inbox label is removed.
