How could I best organize email preferences for several "groups"

Question

In my web app users can join many different groups (think facebook groups). Users need to be able to set email preferences for every group individually. I'd like to set up a single page for this (ideally).

I think the most common use will be "I want to unsubscribe from all emails" / "I want to subscript to all emails". However, I would love to be able to let power users drill down to set different prefs for different groups..some users are members of 20+ groups.

I've started in with the wireframe below but there has to be a better option.

Any help would be great.

Answer 1

A vertical 'table' with Groups as the first column and the settings for each group as a row would do nicely here. It's very quick to scan this to see what settings are currently set, very quick to add/remove settings and can give a select/unselect all checkbox.

The row the mouse hovers over should be highlighted slightly to help the user 'read' left to right. A little extra space every three/five rows makes it look less dense and helps readability again.

^{download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups}

By the way, you should also provide these tools on the individual group pages, with the section in the settings just geared towards high volume changes.

If your system sends out Email notifications upon someone opting into or out of certain notification types, make sure that you don't send 10 Emails if someone makes 10 changes in 5 minutes. You should wait for x amount of time and send one Email including all the changes that took place.

Answer 2

Here are some suggestions:

1. Create three columns Admin Mail/Everyone Mails/Weekly Digest.
2. Create a 4th bucket of all groups the user has subscribed to.
3. Allow drag drop from the 4th bucket to any one of the 3 columns
4. Do away with check boxes! :-)