Two steps to sending your first message with Topicbox

This quick tutorial assumes you already have signed up with an organization. You will create a private group to send out a test email to yourself. 

1. Create a Group

Log in and use the Groups plus icon (+) in the left hand menu bar to open the group creation screen. Create a Private group. Provide:

• Name: name of your group. (maximum length: 30 characters)
• Email: users can email this address to send messages to the group.
• Description: This is shown in the groups screen in the interface, and is included in some system messages such as the welcome message sent when someone first joins a group.
• Privacy settings: Hide the group from non-members.
• Sending messages: Who can send to this group? The group members. For now, this means only you can send to this group.
• Not permitted: Hold for review. Mail sent from anyone other than group members will be marked as moderated, and held in the For Review dashboard.
• Advanced settings: The defaults are fine. No subject prefix is added to group mail. Replies to group mail come back to the group. Mail sent to the group will show the original sender's email address. Mail sent from the group will be addressed to the group, not to each recipient individually. 

Now you have a new group, send yourself a message!

2. Send message

Open your mail client and send a message to the group email address you set above.

You will receive a copy of your mail in your Inbox shortly, and it will appear in the Topicbox interface for your group too.

What next?

Testing moderation

Set your test group to moderate all messages by going into the group settings page, and adjust the permissions for Sending messages, so that Messages go to admins for review before being sent. (This is called "moderation")

In your email client, send another test message to your group. You won't receive your email copy yet and it won't appear in the interface as it is moderated.

Go to your "For Review" dashboard and see your message held. View the message and click to accept it (which sends it to the group) or reject it. Once the message is accepted, it will appear in the group message list and be sent to your email inbox.

Add/Invite members

On your group screen on the right hand side there is the member list. This currently has just one person in it: you. Clicking on the member list takes you to the group member screen. Use the "Add members" button.

Provide a list of email addresses to add to your group, either by typing them in or uploading a file.

Here you can choose to

• add members with a notification: they are added to the group and a welcome email sent to them.
• add members without a notification: they are added to the group.

Finally you review your changes: check your list of users and what will happen to them, before adding them to your Topicbox group. If there are new users to your Topicbox organization, this may impact your billing.