Introduction
============

hl.plone.boardnotifications provides email notifications for Ploneboard (http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Products.Ploneboard) for several purposes. It allows you to:

- let users subscribe/unsubscribe to forum threads
- notify conversation/comment owners when their content has been edited, deleted, or moved to a different forum by a moderator
- configure a specific mail text for each purpose. Leave the mail text empty for notification types you don't want to use
- personalize mails using memberdata properties
- use conversation/comment URL and title in the notifications

Installation
============

1. Add the package to your buildout
2. Run buildout
3. Restart Zope
4. Install hl.plone.boardnotifications using the Plone Management Interface
5. Visit "Board Notifications" in the site control panel (go to @@boardnotifier-settings) and configure the mail templates (see "Configuration" below)

Configuration of Mail Templates
===============================

Subject and Signature
---------------------

If you choose to configure subject and signature, those will be used in all templates. If you want to use subjects and signature on a per template basis, leave these fields blank. You can then add the signature to each template as appropriate. For a per template subject, enter 

    Subject:your subject here 

on the first line of the mail template, followed by a blank line.

Variables
---------

You can use a number of variables to produce meaningful mail texts using standard Python string conversion specifiers with the variable name as mapping key (i.e. %(variable_name)s). The following variables are available in the email templates:

- all member properties as defined in portal_memberdata
- conversation title: use %(threadtitle)s to reference the conversation title in 
- conversation URL: use %(threadurl)s to reference the conversation URL  
- forum title: use %(boardtitle)s to reference the forum title
- comment URL: use %(commenturl)s to reference the comment url

Personalized Mail Salutations
-----------------------------

The salutation field can be used to define gender specific salutations. If you don't need this feature, just leave it blank. When you save your settings, your empty string will be replaced by ':' - simply ignore this. You can still put a generic salutation in each mail template and use %(fullname)s to address the recipient.
If you want personalized salutations, hl.plone.boardnotifications defines a new member property named 'salutation'. It is your responsibility to fill it per member by e.g. customizing @@personal-settings. Then you have to map the possible contents of the salutation member property to the desired salutation, e.g.:

    Mr:Dear Mr. %(fullname)s,
    Mrs:Dear Mrs. %(fullname)s,
    :Dear Mrs./Mr. %(fullname)s,

