XenForo-Personal Conversations vs. vB-Personal Messages

PM's, or Private Messages, on almost every discussion board are split apart into individual, unrelated, non-indexed messages. Such that, you have an "Inbox" full of messages and no relationship exists between any of them…except in your head. In order to carry on a private discussion with multiple participants, you had to CC everyone and then watch for their replies…all the time hoping, they CC'd everyone as well when their response arrived.

On XenForo, things work a bit differently. Personal Conversations are threaded, which means that your 'Conversations' with other users have the same look and feel that a thread does. To be blunt, a Conversation actually is a thread , however it is only visible by those who are participating in it. You can do everything in a Conversation, that you can do in a thread. You can post links, pictures, videos, attachments, quote from other posts, or even place a star beside it to denote it's a special Conversation that you're having. Note: Conversations are always private and seen only by those participating 'in' the particular Conversation.

You can also add people to Conversations. For instance, if Jon and I were discussing something (say an upcoming ride) in a Conversation and he wanted to include Bob and Carol (but not Ted or Alice ), he could simply invite Bob & Carol into our on-going Conversation.

If Jon initiated our Conversation, he has the right (or privilege) to invite others into our private Conversation at his will. He can also choose to allow others to invite people into that same Conversation -or- he could choose to retain that authority. Then, only he could invite other new participants into that Conversation over time.

So, with XenForo's Conversations there is no more going back and forth from your In-box to your Sent-box and back again, hunting for a certain message that you sent to a particular person - which is unquestionably useful on today's mobile devices. All you have to do is

So in short, a Conversation in XenForo is a lot like standing around on a street corner having a conversation amongst your friends. You can choose who you would like to invite over and join in, just as you can choose who not to invite over.

Remember back in vBulletin there was a fixed limit as to how many PM's you could hold onto, before you Inbox filled up? Since XenForo's Conversations are threaded they also take up less space, so you don't have to go in and delete any of your Conversations. NOTE: Conversations older than 2 years since the latest reply will be purged from the system.

Speaking of which, let me explain your Conversations Menu Bar…

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You'll see these choices at the top of any Conversation you're viewing.

You can choose to Edit a Conversation, which simply allows you to change the Title or Status of it…

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The first option, allows you to pass control onto other participants, allowing them to invite whoever-else into the private Conversation.

The second option, simply Locks the Conversation, much like you sometimes see a Locked Thread on the forums. Public Threads are typically locked (i.e. closed) when for whatever reason(s), we don't want folks replying to it. There may come a time in the future, when we decide to unlock a thread thereby allowing more replies to be made to it. Conversations work the exact same way in that you can lock, or unlock a Conversation anytime you choose to.

Looking at the Conversation Menu Bar again…

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You can mark any Conversation as Unread. As soon as you do, the menu choice will change to Mark as Read. Try it, go to your Inbox now and click on any existing Conversation. Once there, click Mark as Unread. Did you notice what happened? You got an instant alert, that you now have an un-read Conversation. Then if you click on Mark as Read, the alert will be instanly recalled.

You can Star (or UnStar) a Conversation at anytime, which simply marks it (i.e. with a star no less ) that you can see whenever you look down your list of various Conversations.

Lastly, you can also choose to Leave a Conversation. I mentioned the analogy of standing on a street corner and having a conversation amongst several of your friends, because it comes into play here as well.

If you walked off from the street corner and left while your friends were still conversing amongst themselves, the Conversation would still be going on. You have left the Conversation, but it's not finished.(i.e. not deleted) It's still right where you left it and you can go back and rejoin a Conversation again later.

If five people were having a Conversation on the street corner and four of them left the Conversation, but the last member stuck around (i.e. perhaps singing for awhile) the Conversation is still there for everyone else to come back to…if they choose to.(i.e. dormant, so to say)

The exception to this, is when ALL members of a Conversation choose to Leave Conversation…then yes, the Conversation will be automatically deleted at that point in time.

Whenever you click on the Leave Conversation choice, your options are…

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So, if you choose Ignore future messages you are 'out' of that Conversation permanently. If others were involved, the Conversation may go on for days or even weeks, but you'll be none the wiser to it. Say it does go on (i.e. some members of the Conversation have never left it) and six months later whoever is still conversing thinks you might be interested in hearing about the latest private news they came across. They can always re-invite you back into the existing Conversation.

Of course, if you choose to Accept future messages anytime someone posts a reply to it, you'll instantly know about it!

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When I imported all of our vBulletin data over into XenForo, I picked up all of your existing Personal Messages and converted them into Conversations. Unfortunately, since vBulletin had no way to thread Personal Message's (i.e. connect them, as on-going conversations), each PM was imported as a separate Conversation.

So to start off with, your Conversations (i.e. various, old, leftover vB PM's) will appear just like individual messages. And since most of them were only between two participants, they should look pretty familiar. In time though your future Conversations will become an asset, whenever you're looking for a particular comment you've made to others, or that others have made to you.

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Anyway, that's sort of how XenForo's Conversations work. You can find your Conversations by clicking the Inbox link, next to your username on the menu bar, at the upper right corner of any page.

Since many of the imported Conversations from vB are probably older and useless now, you can experiment with 'Leaving a Conversation' just to see how it works.

 

I just wanted to report that Conversations are now also Searchable.

Just use the Search Box while on your Conversations (or Inbox) page and the Search conversations only check-box will automatically be ticked…