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

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THE VB3 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

[Zakalway]

I'm thinking of making another MOD that puts Reported Posts into the mod que at the point of those posts being reported, its really simple and easy to do. If a user reports a post, then they are asking for a member of staff to review that post, so it makes sense to me that it should happen that way.

I'd love to see something like that for the Notifications Bar and would be happy to support it financially.

[Lee Roberts]

Originally Posted by deadlySniper

Kudos, if you need help I can offer to be a contributor or supporter

Thanks for the offer will contact you now via skype.

Originally Posted by Zakalway

I'd love to see something like that for the Notifications Bar and would be happy to support it financially.

Thanks for the feedback, will contact you via PM now about this. When the time comes i will start a new thread where we can discuss what will be a new mod.

.Me

[Bluemax712]

Moving flagged posts to the Mod queue sounds interesting Lee - if can limit to certain groups
-some forum users would be flagging everything if they had that power

I'm currently using FractilizeR to show Moderator notifications
which I combine with yours to also email them.

Are you thinking about doing your own version to do everything?

[Lee Roberts]

Originally Posted by apsrfvb4

Moving flagged posts to the Mod queue sounds interesting Lee - if can limit to certain groups
-some forum users would be flagging everything if they had that power

I'm currently using FractilizeR to show Moderator notifications
which I combine with yours to also email them.

Are you thinking about doing your own version to do everything?

I'm not sure at the momment, giving it some thought as to the best way of going about this.

.Me

[wildheart]

Thank you for this mod. I really hoped that it will send a pm to the mods as well?

[wildheart]

It shows that the e-mail was sent at 15:41 and it is now 16.06 and not one of the e-mail addresses have received anything yet?

[Lee Roberts]

Originally Posted by wildheart

Thank you for this mod. I really hoped that it will send a pm to the mods as well?

Thanks for the feedback, i will make a note of that request.

Originally Posted by wildheart

It shows that the e-mail was sent at 15:41 and it is now 16.06 and not one of the e-mail addresses have received anything yet?

Do you have active visitors browsing your forum, i ask because this MOD runs via a cron task and cron tasks only get processed as people visit pages of your forum?

Be sure to have a space inbetween each email address, can you access your servers mail logs to make sure the emails did leave the server?

.Me

[My Hattiesburg]

Originally Posted by Lee Roberts

Humm,

Possibly yes, however I?m thinking it may be better to just have reported posts put into the moderation queue anyway, when they get reported.

What do you think?

.Me

That's a great idea. There was a mod for 3.8 that did this but it wasn't updated for 4.2.

[Lee Roberts]

Originally Posted by My Hattiesburg

That's a great idea. There was a mod for 3.8 that did this but it wasn't updated for 4.2.

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback, i know i think i may have seen it the other day. Leave it all with me guys, i'm going dark for a few days while i work on a custom MOD for some one, after that i hope to drop a few mods on here that cover some of the things we are talking about and some others .

.Me

[Bluemax712]

One other thing would be cool Lee - if it could also send out a message when the queue has been cleared.