We have multiple Basecamp accounts all in place to trying (emphasize TRYING) to fix health care in the US. We have many of the country’s top health policy officials in one of our (four) “grouphubs.”

Like many of you, we have staggered our Projects to reflect different (virtual) organization hierarchies. In every one of our setups, we have an all-in Project for basecamp-wide announcements that we call the “Assembly” (e.g., “Save the Date for the Annual Meeting”). When the administrative assistant of a physician, who has his own Basecamp logon, posts the following comment:

“Dr. Byrne has clinic that day and will not be able to attend”

...and that comment goes to 473 others in the Assembly, we are destroying buy-in and participation every day. When 5 others post similar comments, anything Basecamp becomes noise. Should I be able to train my users better? You bet.

America’s businesses, providers (physicians/hospitals/nurses/others), insurers, and consumer advocacy groups are all rallying around a concept called “Value Exchanges.” A Value Exchange, simply put, is what Basecamp creates and supports—a virtual community dedicated to improving the quality and efficiency of health care. But in a world where physicians and others are bombarded with 127 “urgent” alerts every day, Basecamp emails simply disappear.

Yes, we are all aware that an individual user can turn off email notification in full or by Message. What we really need is the ability for the Message creator to identify whether or not comments should be allowed/not by Message. Simple checkbox “Allow Comments to this Message? Yes No”...shouldn’t be that hard.

If the Message creator is abusive, sends a hostile message, etc.—they will probably lose their Message ability. This is about trust and community…but it is also about making an impact. I need Basecamp to work for health care…but I am losing the fight.

Happy to discuss off line.

mb

mbarbouche….

For a system as large as you use, that makes some REAL sense.

+1

We would use this feature on over half of our messages.

It would also be nice to have the possibility to remove people from the notification list before a comment is posted. This would help to send comments only to people that have to get it.

Perhaps a checkbox for the original message poster of “also e-mail all comments to this message”?—I’m about to lose my entire committee out of annoyance that they’re getting everyone’s individual responses to the question I posted, and have to now opt OUT of receiving those others’ comments, which seems counterintuitive. Receiving all comments to a message via e-mail should be an individual’s own opt IN choice, not the default!

(That way, comments can still appear online, but people’s inboxes don’t get inundated, which seems the main problem from the above complaints.)

I have this problem constantly, too… I spend so much of my time either coaching people on how to create email filters/rules to prevent the email alerts from clogging up in their inbox or coaching them on using RSS.

It’s really frustrating.

For teams that not established, turning off notifications completely is not the answer either, as then everyone has to be nagged to login and check for new activity.

I wrote about this problem a few months ago in a different message thread

My suggestions:

• a digest option that would allow a user to only get one email notification per day
• an option for individual users to turn off email notification altogether
• the option for an admin to remove a specific user from a specific message thread

I would second this approach. I think there is a lot of room for improvement in the way emails are generated and the options that people have for receiving them.

• All Notifications v. Daily Digest/Journal
• Content v. Links
• HTML v. Plain Text
• Display address v. bcc: email addresses

Additional email options that need to be included are:

• Comments via email replies
• File posting, to-dos, milestones, times via email
• Notifications should respect user preferences to [not] receive updates

+1

Please add this asap!!!

I love the digest idea. While I am a big fan of RSS, but not everyone wants to learn another computer tool. I keep e-mail notification off on all projects to keep the system noise down. A periodic update email would be great. Vox does something like this by telling you what your “neighbors” had updated in the last week and I always like getting it.

+1 +1 +1
This “noise dampening” is at the TOP of my request list!!!

I agree with the above posts, we manage 50+ clients at a time, the sheer volume of emails gets out of hand.

It would be nice to have options available to the individual user on how they want to receive notification and how often.

Is there a way to know if the TPTB at 37Signals are A) aware of this issue; and/or B) have it placed somewhere on their priority list of features to add?

I have this problem constantly, too… I spend so much of my time either coaching people on how to create email filters/rules to prevent the email alerts from clogging up in their inbox or coaching them on using RSS.

It’s really frustrating.

Ditto +1111 – many of my people are still afraid of the mouse!! so getting them to sign up for RSS, or to do any admin type work for themselves just won’t happen – no matter how kindly I say “You can do it”.

But they will understand if when they make a note/comment they have to select individuals (or, people grouped by project)
... AND if this could be made mandatory so that a person HAS to manually select who it should be seen by would be also a great help.

This “noise dampening” is at the TOP of my request list!!!

Also, the people who oversee my efforts would not be helped by RSS since the constant activity gets distracting to them – they just want to see the basics (like “X project has reached the 80% completed mark today” or “Z project is 3 days overdue”)