How do PM's work and track?

[Kayla's Dad]

It looks like some of the PM threads did not convert over in their entirety-just part of the conversion hiccup and one of the reasons for backing up/saving to text files before the real conversion. Those that did are listed as separate posts? So I started a pm and it is also listing as separate posts-my pm in a sent folder and the reponses in an inbox folder without the initial/prior pms attached) so it may be bit challenging/new behavior keeping up if you start a thread with several "vocal" folks.

How do you keep up with a pm thread (other than the title) when it involves multiple folks and responses?

How does the "Track Messages" function work? Tried to used it but can't (yet!) figure it out.

Trying to figure out how to think about organizing and keep up with PM's with mulitple response pieces.

[LisaT]

Great question!

The conversion of pm's here is different than if you start a pm over there. Conversion will convert all into individual pm's, so if there are pm's here that folks want to save, then they can either save the pm page as an html file, print to adobe pdf, or copy and paste into something like Word.

Over there, if I pm you, and then you pm me back, in the pm I get back from you, it will contain both my initial pm and your reply. So the pm actually includes the history of the pm conversation. I can then go and delete my original pm because I have a copy in the most recent interchange between you and I. This is important, because after 30 days (I think that's it), the pm limit on the new board will drop to 100.

At the bottom of the pm page over there, are options that will allow you to download your pm's onto your computer for backup.

eta: I'm not sure about the storage if you pm multiple folks - I'm pretty sure it will all end up being stored in the same thread, if that makes any sense.

[LisaT]

I may have spoke too soon. The reply pm will automatically quote the previous ones - leave that in???

I dunno - why don't a couple of you test it out and report back, so we know for sure!!

[Kayla's Dad]

I was getting ready to respond. The reply to my pm did not include a quote-maybe the respondent deleted it before submitting to my initial pm. Will try a couple of more tests and add a few more players.

[LisaT]

Okay, I was told that it would automatically include all the previous ones in the thread, but that wasn't true for the pm I just sent either.

When you hit reply, it automatically quotes everything, I guess folks will just have to get in the habit of quoting everything before? However, in the threads, you the quote feature doesn't work as well as it does here, so the pm thing might not work either.

Sigh, this just might suck

[shepherds]

Regarding the quoting feature in Private Messages in vBulletin:

I've been using it for years and years now and this is how I know it works.

I just did a test on the test site by sending messages back and forth between myself and a test account I set up.

1. I sent one message from my admin account to the gsd_tester account.


2. When I logged in as the gsd_tester and replied back to the PM from the admin, the second I hit the "reply" button, it automatically quotes the PM that I'm replying to.


3. Now going back to my admin account, I see the PM from the gsd_tester and when I click on "reply", vB automatically quotes my ORIGINAL pm to gsd_tester and his PM that he sent to me.

Does this help?

[LisaT]

Yeah, but you have to just make sure that you don't delete the quote, otherwise you lose the tracking of the PMs.

I wonder, if you have a pm that has 50 or 60 replies in it, what that would look like with the multiple quotes.

[shepherds]

I've never had the PM system go that high for me personally. In all honesty, it's a new system that will take some time to get use and yes, it will require everyone to do things different for some tasks. The admin/mod team are around to help everyone find their way around in the new platform. We'll do our best to get everyone up to speed.

[LisaT]

Most of my personal, non-Mod, PM threads are between 10 and 40 replies each, though recently I did delete one that had 120 in it because it involved several different people. I had 2 1/2 pages of pm's that transferred to the test site, which the test site said amounted to just over 1400 pm's (I didn't count them, I'll believe the technology). I'm not sure how many threads per page, don't know if my settings alter that.

I am now curious, if anyone else out there is reading this, how many pm's the test site counts your current pm total as?

[Cassidy's Mom]

2600, give or take a few.