Multiple reminder emails

Ok, so here's an initial patch. This isn't supposed to work yet, though a lot of it does – the defaults can be saved in admin/settings/signup, but the node-specific overrides don't yet work.

What do you think about the UI, and the feature?

And of course, feedback on what I might be doing wrong – specifically on node_form.inc (around line 51, I think I may be missing something about how this works) – that would be really great!

That makes sense. In the meantime, I'd like to get this patch working against the current code (until the new messaging api or submodule solution is further developed). Here is a more developed patch, with help by Jamie – it now successfully saves multiple reminders serialized into the DB, and unserializes the info as needed when retrieving from the DB. The main thing this patch does not yet do is loop through the multiple reminders in cron.inc (still assumes there is only 1 reminder there). So that will need to be modified for this patch to work against the current code - Next installment :)

@stBorchert: That's a good idea -- though for our needs, we want users to be able to set up multiple reminder emails without having to become trained Rules users, or to have access to the power that comes with the ability to create Rules. For instance, with our approach (like the original feature in Signup) a particular role can have permission to create and manage their own Signup-enabled events, and they can also send a set number of emails to anyone who signs up to their event (a max number set by the site admin, to avoid giving the power of spam, and to simplify the interface for now -- i definitely agree with greggles that an 'Add new' option, similar to multiple cck fields, would be a great UI improvement).

@darsic: we have a working version now, that sends emails appropriately for multiple reminders (before *or* after the event start date). Actually, as greggles also pointed out, 'Reminders' is no longer the best term -- we've changed it to 'Scheduled messages' (rather than 'Scheduled emails', in favor of the more general term). It sounds like eventually this could be handled by the Messaging module, so this was another reason we went with 'Scheduled messages' in our current version.

But also, after talking this over with dww & EclipseGc at Drupalcon, our approach had to be completely reworked anyway. The serialized data approach (cool as it is!) was dropped -- instead we've needed to make a new table {signup_scheduled_messages} which allows a new row for each Scheduled message.

In the next week or so I'll be re-rolling a new patch with our changes against 6--1 (as soon as possible, but we have some other work to do between now & then), and I'll add it here for feedback :)

Well, we took slightly longer than a week, but here's a working patch (also worked on heavily by JamesBarger). Aside from what's mentioned farther above, a few other adjustments were made, like placing Scheduled messages in a fieldset (because the repetition of scheduled message forms could get kind of eye-blurring, especially since these forms already look a lot like the confirmation message form!), and some text changes here & there to make it more understandable. So far it seems to work well for us, though it would be great to hear any feedback.

@dww: referring to #3 above, do you think this could fit with what you describe in this comment from that issue?
http://drupal.org/node/290305#comment-1226604

We could still move the existing email code out into submodules that also implement the appropriate hooks, e.g. signup_reminder.module, etc, for folks that don't want all the complexity (and power) of the entire notifications framework.

With the patch in #8, the signup reminder columns are moved into a new table (though the data isn't literally moved with this patch yet) -- from your comment it sounds like this would be better as it's own signup sub-module (signup_scheduled_messages.module)? I just want to check in with you about that, and see if you have any advice for the best way to go about this if you think it's the best direction.

I'm also curious about the upgrade path - should that be built into this patch (or wait for until it's closer to a solution that you'd consider)? If so I have a question about how to handle the moved columns, similar to miki's comment here: http://drupal.org/node/290305#comment-1238871

@Apollo610: currently the only option is days, but this could probably be made configurable without too much difficulty i assume. Maybe a separate issue though.

@darsic & everyone: BTW, for the cron to fully work there's a few more changes needed in includes/cron.inc (Joining the new table & changing those columns names form reminder to message) & includes/date.inc (just changing which table is looked in). I'll post these changes as a patch once we've got everything working properly. The holdup is we have had deadlines, and merged functionality from a few different patches. I'll have to go back and separate those changes to make a new patch against the current Signup 6.x-1.x.dev. Soon! :)

I should mention Signup Reminders in this thread.

The Signup Reminders module allows users to specify multiple reminders (X days, hours or minutes) before or after a Signup in addition to the admin-specified reminder.