Author Topic: What does unsubscribing from a group that doesn't exist mean? (Read 644 times)

Eileen · September 21, 2014, 02:55:24 pm

When search based smart groups were implemented the mechanism for still allowing people to unsubscribe from the group was creating hidden groups. I've recently been investigating a hidden group that I think needs to be deleted but it's raised for me the issue of what does it mean to unsubscribe from a hidden group? I don't really understand why it is useful to allow people to do this. The groups are saved as smart groups not converted to a point in time group of people so keeping the hidden group doesn't seem to serve a historical purpose. I can't see how unsubscribing from a hidden group excludes you from future mailings as it seems to be a one use group

There is a recommendation for immediate deletion. But that implies the only purpose of the group is to allow people the illusion they can unsubscribe

http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php?topic=18759.0

lcdweb · September 22, 2014, 06:43:53 am

Eileen,
it's my understanding that smart groups may also have contacts manually added/removed from them. an unsubscribe from a mailing based on a smart group means the contact is manually removed (in other words excluded) from that group. there is no use of hidden groups. I believe hidden groups are only used when generating a mailing directly from search results. in that situation, the user selects the unsubscribe group during the first step of the wizard.

Eileen · September 22, 2014, 02:20:54 pm

So, if you select the unsubscribe group - is the value of the hidden group only until the mailing is sent? In which case it should be cleaned up after sending?

lcdweb · September 22, 2014, 02:40:24 pm

I went through this code extensively a while ago, but my memory is not that great...

I don't think you want to manually delete the hidden group (it should be pretty harmless to keep around anyway). I believe it is referenced in the mailing report, where things like the recipient groups are listed. It probably isn't a huge deal if you lose that reference, since the final full recipient list is handled in _mailing_recipients and in the _event_queue tables. But if you triggered the mailing from search results and then added additional groups to the list, there's benefit in having each group listed in that report.

Again, memory is fuzzy...

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Author Topic: What does unsubscribing from a group that doesn't exist mean? (Read 644 times)

Eileen

What does unsubscribing from a group that doesn't exist mean?

lcdweb

Re: What does unsubscribing from a group that doesn't exist mean?

Eileen

Re: What does unsubscribing from a group that doesn't exist mean?

lcdweb

Re: What does unsubscribing from a group that doesn't exist mean?