Sending the user an email when admin approves their account? Topic is solved

[Hakunamatata]

Hi,

I have to approve new users accounts on my website.
But it seems the users don't get any notification when I validate their account.

Is there any setting or plugin to do that?

Thanks

[AMurray]

That should be working by default. https://docs.joomla.org/Enabling_user%2 ... _by_admins states the basic work-flow involved, it doesn't mention anything about having to turn on the email feature for notifying the registered user.

Perhaps it is the user's end - the email in their spam folder?

Check the global config settings, make sure Joomla is sending emails, generally.

It is strange, since the user receives the email in the first place to verify the email address, before you get the notification requesting it to be activated - so somewhere along the line, Joomla is sending those messages to the user and site administrator.

[Hakunamatata]

Yes, the users receive the activation link email, but not the one after I validate their account.
How weird is it...

[sozzled]

Hmmm ... see viewtopic.php?f=706&t=981516 Does this apply here?

[Hakunamatata]

Hmmm ... see viewtopic.php?f=706&t=981516 Does this apply here?

Yes, same issue, but no solution there

[Webdongle]

Is your SA user's email your domain suffix or google etc?

Is this related? https://issues.joomla.org/tracker/joomla-cms/27774

[Hakunamatata]

Sorry I don't understand your first question.

I don't think it is related to the topic as I don't have any error message when activating new accounts.

[Webdongle]

You are logged in as Super Administrator when you authorise the new user. Is your email address [email protected] or [email protected] or [email protected] or ...

[Hakunamatata]

You are logged in as Super Administrator when you authorise the new user. Is your email address [email protected] or [email protected] or [email protected] or ...

I'm using an email like [email protected], not a Gmail or free service.

[Webdongle]

Does the notification email fail to reach the newly registered user all the time or only sometimes?
PM me a url so I can test see if my email gets the notification?

[sozzled]

This is what I know:

1. According to the documentation (that was written nearly ten years ago)

   • After registering the new user receives an e-mail message containing a link with a token to verify their e-mail address;
   • After the user's e-mail address has been verified, all users with the Receive System Messages option enabled will receive an e-mail message notifying them that a user has verified their e-mail address and requests that their account be activated. That email message will contain a link with a token to activate the account;
   • Once an administrator has activated the account, the user will receive an e-mail message notifying them that they may now login.

   That's how I understand the process to work and that's how @Hakunamatata understands the process to work.
   /
2. I tested the process about seven months ago and reported to the forum

   I spent about fifteen minutes trying this out on a test site and I had to give up. It seems, from the instructions, that the end user—the one requesting a new account to be approved by the admin—should receive an email after someone issues that approval.
   
   From my reading of things: (1) a person fills in the account registration form, (2) the person then receives an email containing an email-validation token, (3) the system admin receives an email notifying them that an account registration, which has a valid email address (obviously), containing a link to activate the account, (4) the admin logs in and activates the account, and then (5) the original user receives an email notifying them that they can login.
   
   I couldn't get step (4) to work. I received the emails all right and I clicked the "activation link" in step (3) but, when I followed the link (and logged-in) I got a "You are not authorised to view this resource" error. Even so, when I logged into the backend and "manually" activated the account, no email was sent to the registrant. As I wrote earlier, I haven't spent much time experimenting with admin-approved registrations and it's not a matter that consumes my time a lot. So, I have put this matter on hold for when I have nothing else to do.
   
   I'm sorry that I wasn't much help. Not knowing exactly how the OP went about performing the approval, I really can't offer anything else to this discussion, sorry. I believe that things should work but I don't know enough to assist.

I have not been able get this to work myself (not that it's a matter of great importance to me because I don't use the feature). When I reported this back in August last year, the discussion went dead and there was no follow up. I don't know anyone who has successfully made this work but, by the same token, many of my questions to this forum remain unanswered. It's possible that the process works (but I haven't seen any confirmation of it) and it's possible that the process doesn't work (and I don't know if there's any plan to remediate the issue as a bug fix).

If it's important to address this as a problem then those people who feel it is important need to chase things up.

I can't see many issues on the Issue Tracker (open or closed) addressing the matter but I have my doubts about the accuracy of the Issue Tracker in any case. The one case I found was here: https://issues.joomla.org/tracker/joomla-cms/20282.

It is worth reading @brian's article on this: https://brian.teeman.net/joomla/870-aut ... omla-users (even though it was written 4¼ years ago). Brian's conclusion—I hope my understanding of it is correct—was: "[It would be better] if someone looked at resolving this directly in the Joomla core."

The key point that @brian made in his article was this:

[T]here is no code at all to send an email to the user if you activate them from the admin interface - so they never know that they have been approved and can use the web site. This has been reported as a bug several times and is a regular report on the Joomla forum - see https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/issues/13620

When you follow the GitHub discussion for https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/issues/13620 the matter was "closed by a PR". If you follow the PR discussion, the fix was decommisioned for J! 3.x in February last year with the comment "To be rebased for J4".

It is for people to form their own opinion on the issue and use the option (New User Account Activation = Administrator) [or not] as they choose. If the process works as documented (i.e. the new account is notified by email when an administrator approves the request) so much the better. If it doesn't work then raise the matter here on the forum as @Hakunamatata has done and see if the question can be answered; as an alternative, raise the matter at GitHub and see what happens there; as another alternative, use https://joomla.stackexchange.com/.

It should not be difficult for people to test this for themselves using their own test sites. I don't think the mechanism works as documented because, as @brian wrote, "there is no code at all to send an email to the user if you activate them from the admin interface."

That's all that I can say about the matter.

[Webdongle]

On my site registered a spare email address

register 01.png

Received email to the registering email address

register 02.png

Clicked the link and

register 03.png

My admin account received the email

register 04.png

Clicked the link and was taken to the site. Clicked to activate and was presented with the frontend login screen. Logged in with my admin account
And saw

register 05.png

The email address I registered with received the conformation email

FULL SUCCESS

[sozzled]

Thank you, @Webdongle! I really appreciate the time you invested in investigating the matter. As I wrote (back in August last year) I tried and failed and when I reported my findings the discussion went dead. That's a fairly common occurrence when I write on this forum.

I'm not Robinson Crusoe in this issue as it seems. Several people have contributed to the discussion over the years and the discussions have either gone dead or they've been shut down. Perhaps there's been some change made between August 2020 and now; there have, after all, been six releases to J! 3.x in that time and I should try things again for myself.

I realise that this may be a little off-topic, @Webdongle, but have you tried the same thing with a J! 4 test site?

I'll get back to this again soon when I've run another trial.

[sozzled]

Here's the result of my test (it was no different than in August last year):

Step 1: a person fills in the account registration form - all good

Step 2: the person then receives an email containing an email-validation token - all good

Step 3: the person clicks the email-validation token - all good

Step 4: the site admin receives an email notifying them that an account registration, which has a valid email address (obviously), containing a link to activate the account - all good

Step 5: site admin clicks the link and is taken to the following page:

sa_Approve1.png

Step 5: site admin logs in and sees the following page:

sa_Approve2.png

The new account is not activated. What do you think I have done wrong?

I don't know if my circumstances are the same as the OP and I don't know if the "You do not have access to this page" error relates to some view access matter. I'm a bit lost here.

[sozzled]

UPDATE: "You have no access to this page" ... see screenshot below:

sa_Approve3.png

Maybe this has some bearing on the matter?

[sozzled]

FURTHER UPDATE: Yes! I have two menu items (one for Login and the other for Logout).

The Login menu item is set for Guest access, the Logout one is set for Registered access. That's normal. However, with these settings, you can't approve a new account from the frontend.

You need to remove these two menu items (and rely on the login module to login/logout) or change the view access for the Login menu item to Public. Kind of messes things up with the user interface/workflow, but I got it to work.

The new account was activated, an email was sent as per the documentation.

Important notes:

1) The email (notifying a person that their account has been activated) is only sent if the site administrator uses the frontend.

2) If the site administrator approves/activates the account from the backend, no email is sent.

[Webdongle]

Could be that it is set guest as Logged in user cant see anything set as guest (unless their user group has been added to Users >>> Access levels ... Guest. Or redirect after login to a page that has a Level that allows Admin/super Admin.

[sozzled]

Yeah, that makes sense. Not something that I'm very interested in doing, though. We also don't know how, specifically, the OP is "approving" these things (frontend or backend?).

Did you try the procedure with J! 4? I can't test this process because I don't have a J! 4 test site connected to a mail server on the 'net.

[Webdongle]

Nor me

[Hakunamatata]

Thanks guys for the replies.

Does the notification email fail to reach the newly registered user all the time or only sometimes?
PM me a url so I can test see if my email gets the notification?

I created few test accounts, none received the account validated email.
Can you send me PM as I can't PM you cause I'm not active enough

I only activate new accounts in the backend.

[Webdongle]

Sorry @brian searched for your blog about it but can't find it. However I have found a solution:

1. a. Create a menu item type Login
1. b. Set Public
1. c. Put in *edit* a hidden menu *end edit*

2. a. Create a menu item type Alias of the Login
2. b. Edit the Title alias to read ... login-alias
2. c. Set Guest

Is that similar to what you proposed in your blog?

[sozzled]

I only activate new accounts in the backend.

... and, thus, no email will be sent. Please see again my post (the important notes). The email notification only works if approving from the frontend.

[Hakunamatata]

Sorry @brian searched for your blog about it but can't find it. However I have found a solution:

1. a. Create a menu item type Login
1. b. Set Public
1. c. Put in

2. a. Create a menu item type Alias of the Login
2. b. Edit the Title alias to read ... login-alias
2. c. Set Guest

Is that similar to what you proposed in your blog?

Thank you Webdongle, I tried it, but now I have two "Login" menu. Is it normal?

[Webdongle]

Typo
1. c. Put in should have read ... 1. c. Put in a hidden menu

[Hakunamatata]

I only activate new accounts in the backend.

... and, thus, no email will be sent. Please see again my post (the important notes). The email notification only works if approving from the frontend.

Bingo! From the frontend, I received the email notification. I can't believe how simple it was...
Thanks guys!

[brian]

Forum rules prevent me to linking to my blog but @sozzled already did early

[Webdongle]

Yes I saw that link but it looked like it was to add a button instead of auto authorising when the link (in the admin's email) was clicked. I saw nothing about the conformation email failing to be sent to the new user when the Login menu item was set to Guest Level.

[AMurray]

I only activate new accounts in the backend.

... and, thus, no email will be sent. Please see again my post (the important notes). The email notification only works if approving from the frontend.

I have updated the Documentation Wiki making a note of the front-end only admin activation as the documentation page concerning admin activation was not clear.

[MAD King]

I have updated the Documentation Wiki making a note of the front-end only admin activation as the documentation page concerning admin activation was not clear.

Hello,

I have also a question to this: Where can I find the email template which are sent to the user after admin approval?

[sozzled]

@MAD King: There are no "email templates" in J! 3.x; email templates are a feature of J! 4. You can modify the contents of email messages in J! 3.x with language overrides.