Problem with reminder notifications and cron

event_calender (full, latest version from the github) is working great, but I don't seem to be getting any reminder notifications (even though I have them set up correctly I think).

On new events messages are send out fine though.

Our shared host doesn't allow setting up cronjobs to less than 15minutes, but I made one that links the 5 minutes elgg cron page to a 15 minutes interval and that seems to work fine (with cron check the event_calender is recognized as a 5 min cron hook, and the 5 min cron is executed every 15 minutes).

Any idea what could be the cause? The automatic reminders are amonst the most important features for us.

  • You need my message_queue plugin to actually send the reminders. Without that the reminders are only schedulled to be sent but not actually sent.

    I will change the plugin settings text for reminders to make this clear.

    Kevin

  • Ok, thanks for the quick reply.

    This one I assume: https://github.com/kevinjardine/message_queue

    (seems to activate fine on 1.8.18 despite its age).

    Lets hope it does not interfere with the digest or the HTML email handler plugin.

  • Yes. Throttling email sending was something I needed to do a lot so I moved it to a separate plugin. This might change in Elgg 1.9 because I think that they are adding more core support for email queues.

  • Hmm, still doesn't seem to work.

    The message_queue plugin, does it need to be before or after the event_calender plugin in the plugin list?

    Is there any plugin that could be conflicting? Especially those that also send out email on cron jobs might be suspect right?

  • The order should not matter. I tested this myself earlier in the day on my localhost and determined via an error_log message that the notify_user code is executed. My localhost does not actually send mail but if the appropriate notify_user function is called, I think it should work just fine.

    You can verify this yourself by putting your own error_log statement before line 86 of

    message_queue/models/model.php

    Sorry I can't help more.

  • Very strange, I tried what Kevin suggested and it does not seem to even get to that point, e.g. no error log at all.

    I also tried to disable the HTML email handler and the digest plugin, but no change.

    Does anyone else have this working with Elgg 1.8.18?

  • Ok, maybe this is intended behaviour, but it seems to only send reminders for "public" events and not those visible to group members only. Sorry that I didn't try that before, but I was testing in our admin group and didn't want to disturb the "public" users of the site.

    Is there an easy way to allow sending reminders for group only events?

  • Not intended behaviour, but might be a bug. I will check today.

  • Ok, I made an issue on github for it. Thanks for checking it out!

    I also noticed that this doesn't use the Elgg internal notification system, e.g. only emails are send but no Elgg message.