Invitation Application
 | Allows users to send emails, inviting friends and colleagues to join a wiki |
| Type | XAR |
| Category | |
| Developed by | |
| Rating | |
| License | GNU Lesser General Public License 2.1 |
| Bundled With | XWiki Standard |
| Compatibility | Since XWiki 2.4 |
Table of contents
Description
With the Invitation Application you can configure your wiki to send emails through an open mail relay on the server or through an email account of your choosing. Your email account credentials are kept in a configuration Document which need not be visible to anyone.
By default it is not visible to anyone except for administrators. In order to access it, go to the Drawer and access the Application Index (Applications.WebHome):
Invitees may choose to accept or decline an invitation. An invitation may allow users to register in a wiki where registration is forbidden (requires Programming Rights).
Spam prevention measures ensure that recipients of email will have a button to report that message as abuse.
Internationalized and configurable email templates generate rich HTML email content from user input.
By default, the templates are set up to prevent users from inserting their own HTML code.
Configuration
In order to make the Invitation Application work in your wiki you will have to do some configuration.
- You will need to tell it about an email sending (SMTP) server to send the mail through.
- You should tell it a working email address as the admin email, alternatively you can use no-reply@myserver.com.
- You can configure the mail template content.
- You can decide how much user input goes into the mail and customize the templates which generate the mail from the user input.
Let's get started! Go to the Administration Interface and click on the "Invitation" icon.
Configuring a mail server
By default the configuration expects a mail relay without any username or password required to be running on the same machine as the wiki engine.
The mail server configuration extends the configuration given in the General section so if you have a mail server already configured, you can just make all of the fields empty.
It's always a good idea to have a username and password set on the mail relay. Once your email relay has a password set you need only enter the username and password into the Invitation section of the Administration interface.
Using an external mail server
If you are in a company environment where the email server is on another computer or your internet service provider blocks direct sending of email (port 25 blocking) you will have to pass the work of sending to another computer.
If your ISP blocks port 25 then you will need an email service to send the email for you. Make sure you choose a service which allows SMTP client access. Be sure to set the "admin email address" to the same as them email address you sign up so that your mail isn't dropped as a forgery.
Finally you will have to make sure when sending the email, the computer identifies itself properly to the external mail sender. You can do that by adding the host name that the mail server would see to the "Javamail Extra Properties" box as follows:
mail.smtp.starttls.enable=true
When everything is all set up, you will want to add a link to help users find the invitation application. This link is absent by default because without some setup, the invitation application will not work. A good place to consider adding a link is in XWiki.XWikiUserProfileSheet which will make the link visible when users view their profile.
Screenshots
Users can easily send messages to their friends and associates. Messages are generated from a template.
The sender may review their invitations and see if they have been accepted or declined yet. Note the message at the botton of the screen saying which the user will see when they next visit the invitation main page.
The recipient receives the email, which will look much like in the preview.
Handling Abuse
Sometimes users send emails for reasons we would rather they didn't. The abuse handling mechanism illustrates the rich administration functionality of the Invitation Application.
When an invitee clicks on the report abuse link in the email, they are given a confirmation page where they can optionally describe why they think the message is abuse. Recipients can use a similar text field to explain why they are declining an invitation.
When the alleged spammer tries to send more mail they will be met with this:
When a mail moderator views the Invitation main page, they will see a warning at the bottom telling them that a message has been reported as abuse. When they click "All Invitations" and view the message in question, they will be able to see the message alongside the recipient's response.
The mail moderator can then return the privilege to send mail to the sender of the alleged spam.
All messages have a history of every action done to them and by whom. This means that even though the admin can return privileges to a spammer, the admin will be responsible for their actions.
