Add Private messages to the API

Thanks for sharing this idea @danvers! We can see immediately the value of having an API endpoint to send a private message to a user and also some immediate security/privacy concerns about retrieving a private message and displaying them outside the community. Very interesting nonetheless!

To make sure we get a full picture of your proposed use case, could you elaborate on how you see this onboarding flow enabled by the platform’s private messaging functionality? Thank you! 

@danvers curious to know if you are using the automated private message for when you have new members join the Community? ie. when you joined this Community, @Julian sent an automated message welcoming you and shared some tips/articles to check out? I found that thats been pretty useful for our Community and getting them acquainted with the best practices quickly.

Beyond onboarding, here’s another use case. 

1. Someone asks a question
2. it gets replies that might be the answer
3. They ignore
   1. the automated system email 
   2. replies from others and moderators in thread 

I’ve had a lot of success getting answers marked using 3.2 as a tactic. But we know 3.2 might be an issue with reply notification settings (they might stop getting emails about replies if they don’t view an earlier reply). It also can clutter up the activity feeds showing topics as recently active when the activity is just “@user any updates?” 

Add Private Messages to the API would allow me to change this tactic (or add it as a later tactic after replies in thread) to a Private Message outreach. 

• Private Messages trigger a different system email that would go to their inbox
• That system email / all system emails can be unsubscribed 

Typing this out, I guess I could try to automate the same thing via direct email outreach… But I’d rather get them into the community. And I’d rather allow them to unsubscribe from these nudges if they don’t want them. Email outreach seems too aggressive, but a message on the platform doesn’t (to me).