Understanding Notifications

I am trying to get a better understanding of how and where some of the notification settings are located for the following items:

1. Group Activity Stream - I know there is a way for group members to configure what they want to be notified about, but not sure how they are notified.   As far as I know, there are a few ways, such as email, PMS, or onsite notifications, but unsure where or how to set this up, and whether it's something determined by administrators or can be set at the user level.



2. Recent Activity Stream - Is there a way for users (or admins) to set what users are notified about, similar to how they are within groups?



3. Notifications Tab  
3a. I cannot seem to remember how I set up the Notification tab in the "Edit Profile" section, where I permitted users to set email notifications for Private Messages.  Where would this have been set?
3b. Can this Notifications Tab also contain other notification settings, like group and recent activity?

 
 

1. Group Activity Stream - I know there is a way for group members to configure what they want to be notified about, but not sure how they are notified. As far as I know, there are a few ways, such as email, PMS, or onsite notifications, but unsure where or how to set this up, and whether it's something determined by administrators or can be set at the user level.

The CB Activity notifications will be sent as CB Activity notifications. They won't send as emails or private messages.

I recommend configuring CB Activity to override CB GroupJive notification behavior to always use CB Activity notifications for on-site notifications instead of private messages and especially do not recommend emails as it can cause a lot of spam from your domain. You can configure this in CB Activity > Parameters > Notifications > Notify > CB GroupJive section by setting "Notifications" to "Replace".

2. Recent Activity Stream - Is there a way for users (or admins) to set what users are notified about, similar to how they are within groups?

Yes, you can set notifications to be dependent on a field. This is configured in CB Activity > Parameters > Notifications > Notify. So you could create a bunch of checkbox fields, set them to display as yesno buttons, and configure your notifications to be based off those. Then in profile edit they can toggle their notifications. Notifications in CB Activity can be dependent on a field for sending AND receiving.

3a. I cannot seem to remember how I set up the Notification tab in the "Edit Profile" section, where I permitted users to set email notifications for Private Messages. Where would this have been set?

I've no idea what you configured that to do. Looks like a checkbox yes/no field configured at some point.

3b. Can this Notifications Tab also contain other notification settings, like group and recent activity?

As it's just a tab, yes. Just add more fields to it and assign those fields to CB Activity notifications as explained above. For GJ no as GJ notifications are per-group.

Worth noting we'll be reworking notifications system sometime in CB 3.0s release. We want to implement a centralized system for dealing with subscribing to notifications. It's a bit clunky right now. So the notification features in CB Activity will probably be moved into core CB so we can better integrate them throughout CB.

Thanks.    Where do onsite notifications usually appear (I can't remember where this would show up for a user)?

Yes, you can set notifications to be dependent on a field. This is configured in CB Activity > Parameters > Notifications > Notify. So you could create a bunch of checkbox fields, set them to display as yesno buttons, and configure your notifications to be based off those. Then in profile edit they can toggle their notifications. Notifications in CB Activity can be dependent on a field for sending AND receiving.

Would you mind walking me through how I configure the notifications to be based on those yes/no field types?   If I had to guess,  I think all I need to do is, instead of selecting enabled, I select the appropriate field item that I created with a yes/no field item.

And if I only wanted one yes/no field to globally affect all notifications, I would just select the same field to control it?
 

It looks like the one that I have now in the Notification tab seems to be similar to what you suggested, but from what I can tell, it's not doing anything as the PMS plugin's Notification setting is set to Yes instead of the field.   Would that be a correct understanding of what is happening?
 

Worth noting we'll be reworking notifications system sometime in CB 3.0s release. We want to implement a centralized system for dealing with subscribing to notifications. It's a bit clunky right now. So the notification features in CB Activity will probably be moved into core CB so we can better integrate them throughout CB.

Is CB3 going to be supported for J4 ( I have not yet updated to J5 and still running on an older version of MySQL (5.7.44). I need to upgrade my server's OS, so the jump up to J5 has a small hurdle to get past.  I know I am running out og time as the EOL for J4 is this fall.   By the way, how close is CB3 to being released?

Bonus question:  I am not sure what Automation/Auto Update is for, and if it's better to have it enabled?