Administrative and Maintenance Tools - vBMQN - Moderation Queue Notifications + Desktop App

****

THE VB4 VERSION IS LOCATED HERE !

Introduction
There are many scenarios where this mod would come in handy for administrators. There are too many for me to cover them all, so I will give you the scenario this mod was developed for...

If you have a hand full of moderating staff and a large number of forums, adding each moderator to each forum can be quite a pain, however doing it that way would give you notifications for those moderators when something dose need their attention from within those said forums...

Another option would be to setup staff to be Global Moderators, this removes the need to add them to specific forums but it also removes queue notifications because moderators wouldn?t be assigned to individual forums...

We require new members to be moderated and/or that their first submissions to the forum require moderating, this can become quite a pain because again staff would need to continually check the moderation queue for new items...

The Solution and Requirements
What we need is moderation queue notifications via email and possibly a desktop app for those staff that would rather not use their email/inbox.

Features:
- Email Notifications for multiple users/addresses
- Notifications for every item type (posts, threads, attachments etc.)
- Email sending using the vB mail method/system (plain text emails)
- Email generation should use the vB Phrase system (multi-language support)
- Automated checking of the moderation queue (vB Cron system)
- Should support the Scheduled Task log system (debugging, report actions taken)
- Support for external applications and their development (xml based status)

All of the above are present in the first release of this mod (v1), please see the screen shots.

This mod is setup as a vB Cron task; I could not see/find a better way to make this an automated system working with anything else from within the vB system. By default the Cron task is setup to run every 30 minutes, if you would like to adjust this, simply go in and adjust the Cron job as you wish.

Desktop App
At the moment I am still developing a windows (.net) desktop app to work with this, right now we don?t have a big need for this so it?s not a priority for me to develop this and get it out to you any time soon, when the moderation queue is checked regardless of its current state the included xml file is updated to reflect this. So all your own app would need to do is read in this xml file and take the action you require.

If there is a massive interest in the desktop app for this I could be persuaded to push it to the top of my job list, for now though it is work in progress and with no planned deadline or release date.

Support
We have been using this mod in a production environment for almost 12 months now with no problems at all, it is really quite a simple mod and I?m surprised it hasn?t been done already, given the number of requests I have seen.

I will support this as best I can, I am a busy guy so you will need to understand this if you do run into any problems and request support.

Install/Upgrade
Installing this mod is much like any other, upload the files in the download to the same locations on your server, import the product xml file, go to the Admin > Settings > Options > vBMQN: General Options page and configure as you wish. If you are upgrading from an older version simply follow the same steps as installing for the first time.

Change Log
v1.0 - 11 Feb 2013
- First version

v2.0 - 12 Feb 2013
- Added support for table prefix's ( config.php > $config['Database']['tableprefix'] = ''; )
- Rewrite of the database query code, now uses the vB Database Class ( $vbulletin->db->query_first )
- Changed from the use of the php "number_format" function to the vB function "vb_number_format"
- Added instant email notification rather than sending emails to the vB mail queue ( $notsubscription = true )

Enjoy!
This has helped us allot and I hope those of you who have requested this before find it to be ?just the job? as well.

Regards,
Lee Roberts

[Lee Roberts]

** Reserved **

Dont forget to mark as Installed, Nominate and Rate/Vote for it !

.Me

[Bluemax712]

Hi Lee,
Works great - no more having to check in each day just to see if something is stuck in the Moderation queue

Installed on a vB 3.8.7 server.

The Task Scheduler for both vB3 and vB4 seem to be missing a way to select multiple hours each day for a task to run - like at 10:00 and 14:00 for example - as far as I can tell?

Needed to make a new Task using the original vBMQN Task as a template
and set it to run at the alternate time.

[Lee Roberts]

Hi,

Cool thanks for the feedback!

Your right i dont think the stock "Task Scheduler" in vB allows you to choose specific hours in the way that you want.

You could have just edited the vBMQN Task rather than make a new one, or did you mean: You setup a new Task for each of the hours you require this to run on ?

.Me

[Bluemax712]

Originally Posted by Lee Roberts

Hi,

Cool thanks for the feedback!

Your right i dont think the stock "Task Scheduler" in vB allows you to choose specific hours in the way that you want.

You could have just edited the vBMQN Task rather than make a new one, or did you mean: You setup a new Task for each of the hours you require this to run on ?

.Me

Making a new task was the only way I could see to get it to run on a different hour
than the first one.

One thing I learned which will help on test setups:
The Task Manager scripts will only run by themselves when there is activity on the site (no matter how often a task is set to run)
ie: Need to be accessing the forum like a regular user if you want the scripts to run and see output in the Task Manager Log.

[Lee Roberts]

Originally Posted by apsrfvb4

Making a new task was the only way I could see to get it to run on a different hour than the first one.

One thing I learned which will help on test setups:
The Task Manager scripts will only run by themselves when there is activity on the site (no matter how often a task is set to run)
ie: Need to be accessing the forum like a regular user if you want the scripts to run and see output in the Task Manager Log.

Yea this is very true, i normally sit on the "users online" (forums/online.php) page in a new window tab and then set the refresh rate to something quite frequent, this can be found under: AdminCP > Settings > Options > Who's Online Options > Who's Online Refresh Period

.Me