This document summarizes the Message Stack modules for Drupal, which allow managing activity streams, notifications, and subscriptions. The Message, Message Notify, Flag, and Message Subscribe modules together enable logging system events as messages, identifying subscribers through flags, and delivering message notifications via various plugins. The document provides an overview of how the modules work together and examples of common use cases like activity streams and notification of subscribers.

1. MESSAGE STACK
managing activity streams, notifications,
subscriptions in a Drupal way

2. ABOUT US
Paolo Libanore
Web Area Manager
Sixeleven
@paololibanore
Italo Mairo
Senior Drupal Developer
Sixeleven
2

3. MESSAGE STACK
https://www.drupal.org/project/message
Mantainer: Amitaibu
“The Message module is the core of the message
stack. It enables logging and displaying system
events in a number of different use cases.”
With Message Notify, Flag and Message Subscribe
modules the website can send out notifications, and allow
users to subscribe or unsubscribe to notifications

4. MESSAGES VALUE
Messages improve communication:
• They help your site interact with people.
• They help people interact with your site.
• They help people interact with other people.

5. MESSAGES SAMPLES
• John commented on X article
• John started following Paul
• Phil just became a member
• There’s a new Y article in Z category

6. DISTRO USING MESSAGE
Message stack is widely used by several distributions
orders logging and notifications
activity streams and notifications
activity streams and notifications

7. OUR CASE STUDY
• Client:
• Project:
• Internal community platform to improve communication
among 800 staff spread out in the world local offices
• Message stack key features: activity streams + notifications

9. MESSAGE HANDBOOK
Drupal Project Documentation:
https://www.drupal.org/node/2180145

10. MESSAGE STACK
The message stack comprises three main modules:
• defines message entity types (fieldable) and let you
create messages instances with dynamic content
• handles delivery of a specific message notification
through specialized plugins (e-mail, sms, …)
• given a new message identifies the recipients/
subscribers through flag module and pass the
message to message notify module for delivery

11. FLAG MODULE
https://www.drupal.org/project/flag
“Using this module, the site administrator can
provide any number of flags for nodes, comments,
users, and any other type of entity. Some
possibilities include bookmarks, marking important,
friends, or flag as offensive”

12. MAIN USE CASES
1. Activity stream / News feed
2. Notifications: users who subscribe to
content will be notified when events
occur that involve that content

13. OUT OF THE BOX READY?
not exactly
• the 3 modules expose API to other modules
• pluggable architecture that supports
customization and extensibility
• but … to let you understand, the 3 modules
includes features and example modules to
easily test the workflow

14. WHAT IS A MESSAGE
• message is an entity
• fieldable
• token support
• leverages view modes
• translatable

15. ACTIVITY STREAM
Messages can be created through:
• Custom code: Hooks
• Via UI: Rules
Message example (message_example: feature available in message_module), exposes:
• message types
• example of view
• custom code that hooks events and creates messages

16. ACTIVITY STREAM DEMO

17. SUBSCRIBERS NOTIFICATION
after creating the message, custom module shall invoke:
message_subscribe_send_messages()
with this command the message_subscribe module handles:
• get basic context
i.e..the node of the comment, the author of the comment and node, the
terms and the groups
• get subscribers (people who flagged)
• pass to message_notify

18. NOTIFICATIONS DEMO

19. LET USER CHOOSE
By default message subscribe send the
notification to all the users that subscribed
content
With message_subscribe_email module
we can let user define its email preference
for every subscribed content

20. BONUS
• Message subscribe queue
• Message auto purge
• Message digest:
send notification once a day/week
• Organic groups integration

21. THANK YOU!
www.sixeleven.it