Understanding messaging data models

A relevant technical area you might need to work with is the messaging-related models used by the Chatter widget found in many forms. These features are provided by the Discuss module with a technical name of mail, so it needs to be installed before the following menu items are available.

The relevant technical models can be found in the Settings | Technical | Discuss menu. The most important options found there are listed here:

• Message, or mail.message, stores each message. It is related to a resource, a particular record in a model, through the Mail Thread abstract model.
• Message Subtype, or mail.message.subtype, is used for each message. The basic subtypes are Note, for internal discussions, Discussion, for outside messages, and Activities, for scheduled activities. These are available for any model. Other subtypes, usually model-specific, can be added to identify different events. This allows the configuring of default subscriptions...