Messages

Two unrelated things on a hub are called messaging, and this chapter is about the smaller and less useful of them. Read the next section before you go looking for a screen.

No hub needs this component, and there is nothing here to set up. If you arrived looking for how members get notified — a reply on their support ticket, an invitation to a group — that is the other messaging, and the next section says where its settings are. If you arrived because something about it looks broken, it probably is; that is recorded below and it is not worth fixing, because nothing on the hub depends on it.

Which messaging is which

Hub notifications and member-to-member messages are handled by the framework's message system, which writes to the #__xmessage* tables. This is what members mean by "messages": the Messages tab on a member's profile, with its Inbox, Archive, Trash, Sent and Settings, and everything the hub sends them — a reply on a support ticket, a group invitation, a wish list change, a project notice. Components send those by firing xmessage.onSendMessage, and the XMessage plugins (Email, Internal, Handler) decide how each one is delivered. What the member does not want by email, they can switch to on-site delivery only, per notification type, from that tab's Settings.

Nothing in this chapter touches that system. It is configured through:

Extensions > Plugins, members folder, Members - Messages, which puts the tab on the profile and sets the Default Method for a member who has never chosen — Email or Internal.
Extensions > Plugins, xmessage folder, where XMessage - Handler carries the rate limits (time_limit, daily_limit) that stop a runaway component from flooding a mailbox.
The Messaging tab on a member's record; see Members.

The Messages component, documented below, is a separate, administrator-only private-message inbox using the #__messages table. It exists so that one administrator can send another a note inside the administrator interface. It has nothing to do with member messaging, sends nothing to the site, and is inherited from the upstream CMS rather than written for Hubzero.

Whether you can reach it

Probably not. The component's install migration deliberately creates no entry in the administrator's Components menu, and nothing else in the tree links to it: it is reachable only by typing

/administrator/index.php?option=com_messages

Given that, treat this component as dormant. It is not a supported way to communicate with hub members, and nothing in the site depends on it.

The screens

If you do open it, there are two.

A list of the messages sent to you — the list is filtered to the logged-in administrator, so two administrators never see the same rows. Columns are Subject, which opens the message, Read, From, and the date. The state icon in the Read column toggles a message between read and unread.

Above the list, a search box matching the subject or body, and a select filtering by Read, Unread or Trashed.

The toolbar offers New Private Message, Mark As Read, Mark as Unread, Trash, My Settings, Options and Help. Two of these do nothing:

Trash posts a task the controller does not implement, so it silently redraws the list. There is no trash state and no way to reach one; the Trashed filter therefore never matches anything.
Empty Trash, which replaces Trash when the Trashed filter is selected, does delete, but as the filter cannot select any rows it never has anything to delete. Delete is permanent when it does run.

Selecting Unread in the filter shows both read and unread messages: the controller treats the value 0 as "no filter".

Writing a message

New Private Message opens a form with a Recipient picker, a Subject and a Message body, and a Send button. The recipient picker is the standard member autocompleter.

Sending stores the message and, if the sender's mail setting says so, emails the recipient a note telling them to log in and read it. Only administrators who can reach the administrator interface can be sent one, because only they can read it.

Reading a message opens it in a read-only view with a Reply button, which opens a blank compose form — it does not quote or address the original.

My Settings

The My Settings toolbar button opens a small pop-up with three per-administrator settings, stored in #__messages_cfg:

Setting	What it is meant to do
Lock Inbox	Refuse new messages.
Email New Messages	Email you when a message arrives.
Auto-purge Messages (days)	Delete messages after this many days.

Options

The component's configuration has only a Permissions tab; there are no settings. config/access.xml declares Configure, Access Administration Interface, Create, Delete and Edit State. Access Administration Interface is what admits you to the screens.

What a manager should do

Nothing. Leave the component installed — removing it is not supported and nothing gains from it — and do member communication through the systems that members can actually see: the notification settings described at the top of this chapter, and Newsletters for anything sent to many people at once.