I would never be diving so deep into something like this, especially when it appeared from your prior post to be a non-issue. But in the course of my unsuccessful attempts to solve what seemed like a simple problem--unless I'm missing something which would make me very happy--it looks like there are a couple pieces missing here which could have substantial consequences.
Some of the forums on our board contain sensitive information to which access is limited to a small number of people, one of whom is being replaced by someone else. The bottom line is I've had no problem revising the appropriate forum permissions for the two of them, but the user who was removed remains as a subscriber to all of those forums which I've found no way to change.
This all started when I mentioned in my prior post that I did't know how to remove subscriptions for individual users, to which you responded as follows:
devspace wrote: ↑12 Dec 2022, 09:00
Unsubscribing users - ACP > Users and groups > Manage users > [select user] > select Subscriptions from the top right dropdown and then subscribe/unsubscribe as appropriate.
That seemed simple enough, but unfortunately it doesn't work that way at all. Although I ultimately found what you described after a lot of poking around, I still couldn't remove his subscriptions and in the process of trying every which way, I discovered what look like other potentially more serious issues. Some of my wheel spinning was my fault--I didn't see an advanced permission under "Misc" allowing users/groups to view subscriptions, which was set to "No" for everyone, including Administrators. I figured enabling that would do the trick, so following your instructions, I "selected" the removed user but "Subscriptions" is not in the drop-down.
user drop down.png
BTW, clicking the user's name instead of "Select", brings up a profile view which includes a static, non-editable list of the user's forum subscriptions, but nowhere in user administration is there any option to modify a user's subscriptions.
The only way I found to get to the list you described is through the UCP, where the option to Manage Subscriptions appears in multiple places. Selecting any of them displays the same list of my forum subscriptions which, as you indicated, I could mark and click "Unsubscribe". In my prior post I also mentioned duplicate subscriptions about which you said a screen shot might help. So here's what I saw, highlighting some of the many duplicates:
Screen Shot 2022-12-12 at 6.30.44 PM.png
I'm virtually certain those result from my having subscribed to a forum as a user and again later through the extension as a member of a group. So, yes, from this list I could remove duplicate subscriptions but how would I know which one I'm deleting? Independent of the rest of this, I would recommend the list display the source of each subscription, e.g., "User", "Registered User", etc., and maybe the date, instead of the last post. That would be nice, but it's definitely a minor point. But now we're getting to the real problems. That is a list of
my subscriptions but I need to change the removed user's subscriptions which, after many hours going at it from every possible angle, I found no way to do.
Like mine, the Forum Subscription list and the removed user's profile page showed duplicate subscriptions to multiple forums I assume were created for the same reasons. My first step in making the switch between these two users was to change their group memberships and forum permissions. After that was done and confirmed (for good measure his user forum permissions were expressly set to "No Access" and the cache was flushed), having no connection to those forums whatsoever, the duplicate subscriptions remained unchanged. At the same time, notwithstanding full access permissions and membership in the group with a subscription, his replacement had no subscriptions whatsoever.
Unless I've missed some administrative function, that can only mean subscriptions aren't automatically synchronized with changes in group membership or forum access. I can't think of any argument against doing that, and aside from creating a real admin headache, it makes no sense for people to be notified of activity they're not allowed to see. That's especially true for sensitive communications where the mere fact of activity could have significance, not to mention the potential modification of notifications to include contents of the post as some extensions are designed to do.
OK, all of this is absolutely true, but my major priority was fixing this particular problem. This is a small, private board with comparatively few members so if I could have done that I sincerely doubt I'd have spent the time to write any of this. So, my first step was to unsubscribe the entire group and re-subscribe it once everything was cleaned out, which I'm sure would only subscribe the current members. Removing those group subscriptions worked the way it should, and the duplicate subscriptions attributable to his group membership were gone. But the user subscriptions still remained, leaving the removed user as the
only subscriber.
I tried everything I could think of to get at the user subscriptions to no avail. Installation of the extension created an ACP module "Users and Groups/User Utilities/Forum Subscriptions" which was initially hidden. I tried turning it on, but get this error when I click it:
general error.png
I get the same error when I click Forum Subscriptions under Groups. It's possible I did something to the ACP Module settings to cause that but I must have maxed out my attachments, so I cant upload the settings. The Module is called FORUM_SUBSCRIPTIONS, the parent is Groups, and the file called by the module is "..\groups_forumsubs_module".
There is another "User Subscription" menu item under Users, but that just brings up the Forum Subscriptions which shows the subscriptions but has no option to unsubscribe. Clicking the user name just takes you back to the user admin screen. I also tried "Testing out the user's permissions" and bringing up the UCP that way. Although I couldn't really tell from the list whose subscriptions I was looking at, when I unsubscribed a forum it was my subscription that got removed. Same was true if I browsed to a forum. Subscribing/Unsubscribing affected my subscriptions even though I was theoretically operating with the removed user's permissions.
One final but not insignificant point. In addition to having no way to unsubscribe a user, I don't see any way to subscribe an individual user either. That is an important function too.
I'm at my wits end, so any help you can give would be appreciated. I hope the answer is not remove and reinstall the extension because there are many, many subscriptions that are fine and that would be killing a gnat with an elephant gun, like telephone computer techs who used to tell you to format your hard drive because something isn't working right.
Thank you.
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