Confluence Space - daily digest of updates

[Peter Manoharan]

This question is in reference to Atlassian Documentation: Subscribing to Email Notifications of Updates to Confluence Content

I am watching a confluence space for updates on changes. However I only want a daily digest of the updates. I don't want an email everytime something is changed. How can I do this?

[Callista Rogers]

In a world where we have constant notification overload, I've had to just unsubscribe from all of the emails, filter them out, and then check the notifications panel in Confluence when I want to know what's going on. I find it a little ridiculous that I can't specify how I want to receive content.

[Rodney Hughes]

I understand the frustration - we have over 500 Spaces and over 5000 Users so there are times when there is a lot of activity.

You only receive notifications for Spaces that you have access to.

Note that you can set which pages/blog post or entire Space you are watching.

You can also choose to get the single "Daily Update" email related to all Spaces that you have access to. 

We are about to upgrade from v5.8 to v7 and I note there is a slight change in the Documentation (underlined below) and seems to be a good solution to my previous comment above about loading 100 files to the system creating 10 email alerts.

.. and a new "Weekly Digest" email

Watch Pages, Spaces and Blogs
You can 'watch' a Confluence page, blog post or space. Confluence will then send you a notification email whenever anyone updates your watched content.
You'll receive email notifications for:

• Page / blog post edits (unless the author clears the 'Notify watchers'check box).
• Deletions.
• Attachments, including new versions or deletions of an existing attachment.
• Comments, including new comments or deletions of existing comments.

By default, Confluence will assign you as a watcher of any page or blog post that you create or edit. This behavior is called 'autowatch'.

There's no daily digest for email notifications. You'll receive immediate emails for important notifications (like mentions and new pages), but when lots of changes are being made at the same time, you'll only receive a single email with all the changes (within a 10 minute window).

You will not receive email notifications for content changes due to the output of a macro, because the page content itself hasn't been edited. We also don't send a notification when a comment is edited.
You need 'View' permission for the page, blog post or space to receive notifications.

Also under the subsequent section

Email Notifications

You can also subscribe to these summary reports:

A daily report of the 30 most popular updates to all spaces that you have permission to view.

A daily or weekly report of recommended updates, in all spaces that you have permission to view.

[Lauren Hanyok]

It seems like this would be a no-brainer feature to have,.  My organization is so large that subscribing to "changes in all spaces I have permission to view" is ridiculous.  I only want to get a daily digest of the changes made in spaces I'm watching, because those are where my work areas/interests are and can directly affect my work.  Getting updates for spaces I don't need to see doesn't help. 

Additionally, our leadership is started to get into confluence, but they're already burdened with so many emails, that the immediate emails (vs. a daily or even weekly digest) bog down their inbox even further, so they'll turn off the watch feature and potentially miss useful or important updates.

Is there a plan to make this a future feature?  

[Rodney Hughes]

Hi Lauren

Thanks for commenting on this item ... it seems to be one of those subjects that causes so much grief to Users being "spammed" by alert emails that no-one wants to talk about it ...

I created a bit of a motto in our international industry association Knowledge Management System :

"Knowledge is not knowledge unless you know when new knowledge is created or edited ... otherwise it is just a web site full of stuff that no-one uses"

So part of the implications of using Confluence is that Users WILL suddenly know about all sorts of stuff.  To put it into "Executive-speak" it is like keeping an eye on the share price of their company ... but equally they don't need to see an instantaneous alert for every transaction of share buying/selling,

Over the last two years since my above comment, I have come to realise that the problem of spam email alerts is actually in the hands of the editor of the page.  

We are now ACTIVELY telling all our Users to be considerate of their fellow Users telling them:
When you are editing a page in Confluence, just before you click Save, UN-TICK the "Notify Watchers" box just near the Save button.  This prevents the instantaneous email alerts being sent.  However it does not stop the Daily Summary email being sent. 

This is a personal setting for your editing sessions. The box will remain un-ticked in future editing sessions until you decide to tick it again.

There is another piece of advice to the editors and file up-loaders ...
When you load a file attachment to the Space, each file is an individual action which generates an email alert.  I have not found a way to stop that so drag-and-drop 100 files is easy for me to do, but creates 100 emails to every Watcher :(

So if you have such a bulk upload to do, set the page to Restricted Viewing to just yourself. (Note any existing restrictions)
Upload all your files.
Then a few minutes after the uploads have been done, remove your View Restrictions (reinstate any of the previous View Restrictions)
then just add a single Comment to the bottom of the page "100 new files uploaded" which will generate a single instantaneous alert to the Watchers
:)

Then the other part of the User advice is two opt-in selections:

First, when they next visit their Spaces, click the EYE icon in your selected Space and tick "Watch all content in this Space" ... note this is an individual Space OPT-IN process so EVERY user can choose which of all the Spaces they have access to they wish to watch ... that includes the Executives who must also make such a decision

Second,  (Now this is the annoying part that I would recommend Atlassian change the location) ... is to change your email alert settings. 
Click your Avatar menu .. it will give you a few options:
One is <<Settings>> but that is NOT where you will find the email alert settings!!! :( 
The one you need to click is <<Watches>>, then scroll to the bottom of the page (I have over 400 Spaces to manage so my page is quite long).
There at the bottom you will find a sentence:
"You can set your email notification options on the email settings page."
"email settings" is a link to the settings you need to select.
Now set two of the options as a recommended MINIMUM:

• Subscribe to daily updates
• Subscribe to all blog posts

The "daily updates" means they will get a single email covering all their Spaces they are watching

The other recommended option to set is

• Show changed content

This third one means that the alert emails actually show you what the editor has done so you don't even have to open the page to see that it was just a typo error correction :)

... and the final ongoing action is then that if any User sees another User alert-spamming  every 5 minutes with every save of the page they are editing, just send them a quick email with a screen shot of what they have just caused by not having UN-TICKED the "Notify watchers" box ... and perhaps have a link to a Blog post or instructions page in your Space where these above instructions are posted!

I hope that helps.

(and if Atlassian are watching this question, please move the Email Alert settings to appear under the Avatar>Settings menu)

[Lauren Hanyok]

This is helpful, although still doesn't solve the problem of only getting a daily digest for spaces I'm watching.  It doesn't help that when Confluence was pushed to our organization with little training and no strategies for how to create spaces (we are able to create our own spaces willy-nilly and there is little to know administration in that respect).  While I agree wholeheartedly that people should be more considerate as they make changes, I feel like changing the culture/routine of thousands of users is much harder than writing a script that allows you to get a digest of just the spaces you're watching ;).  

[chriseb]

"Knowledge is not knowledge unless you know when new knowledge is created or edited ... otherwise it is just a web site full of stuff that no-one uses"

I don't think that translating this to a 'constant stream of emails no-one reads' necessarily represents any kind of solution.

[Rodney Hughes]

The daily digest is not a "constant stream of emails" - it is ONE email ONCE a day showing what has changed in all the Spaces you are Watching ... IF you have selected the <<Watch all content in this Space>> option (first image below), AND selected the <<Daily Update>> option in your Watch list email settings (second image).

The constant stream of emails i.e. "dozens er day" happens as a result of an "inconsiderate editor" of the page. ...

i..e if you are the recipient of the emails, other than to become ignorant of any new content by stopping ALL alert emails (and then good luck trolling around trying to know what is going on) , you can't stop the emails coming to you directly. 

If you are the editor of the page you can stop the system sending instantaneous emails to everyone else  :)

Down in the bottom right corner of the page you are editing you will see either a <<Save>> button, or a <<Publish>> button (depending on your Confluence version).

Next to that is an option box called <<Notify watchers>>

If that box is TICKED, then every time you click Save/Publish an email is sent to all the Watchers instantly ... that is the "constant stream of emails" you are referring to.   (And they ALSO will get their Daily Update email if they have selected that in their personal settings for their Watches)

If that box is UNTICKED, it will NOT send instantaneous emails every time you click Save/Publish - only the Daily Update if the others have selected that option in the Watch email settings.

The box will remain UNTICKED in future sessions until you TICK it again.

So as you are experiencing a constant stream of emails from your other colleagues in your Space, 

• UNTICK <<Notify watchers>> on your own browser
•  politely ask them to do the same

I advise all my Users to 

a) in the Space itself , <<Watch all content in this Space>> AND  in their first editing a page session, UNTICK <<Notify watchers>>

b) in their personal Watch list email settings,  Select <<Subscribe to daily updates>> AND <<Subscribe to all blog posts>> AND <<Show changed content>> .. the last one is very helpful that then they don't have to visit the page to see what has changed - the changes are shown directly in the email :)

aaaa

[Nibu Thomas]

Is there some way to consolidate these notifications on a weekly basis? Jira seems to have a plugin that makes this possible. Couldn't find anything for confluence. We are on server.

[Rodney Hughes]

Sorry I hadn't spotted this question earlier ... seems others have overlooked it as well

The difference between Watch and Daily Updates is confusing... and is why I stumbled across your question and you have saved the process of inadvertently duplicating your question ...

We are on v5.8 (which will be the same in other versions) and I was trying to help one of our users with much the same query, so I hope a truly knowledgeable person can confirm my understanding ... ... please????

There are two references in the on line documentation

https://confluence.atlassian.com/conf58/email-notifications-771892526.html

https://confluence.atlassian.com/conf58/watch-pages-spaces-and-blogs-771892521.html

So I think (someone please confirm) Watches mean you get the "instantaneous" individual alert emails immediately someone creates something edits something or deletes something .... INCLUDING Comments and uploading multiple attachments creates multiple alerts!!!  (Uploading 100 attachments creates 100 emails as each file upload is an individual event even if you have done a multi-select drag-and-drop)

Email Notifications and Daily Updates is where you elect to get a daily summary ... INCLUDING Blogs, new pages, edited pages, deleted pages and new/edit Comments .... but that does NOT include info about Attachments (someone please confirm)

The confusion comes with Email Notifications because the link above starts off by mentioning Watches so it is not clear if they are truly independent????  whilst on the other hand in the Watches link above it says to get Watches from all Spaces in the site just set your Email Notifications as Daily Updates so (someone please confirm)
And then I am not sure how the Subscribe to Blog Posts affects those settings...

i.e. if I set Daily Updates but am not Watching anything in the Space (e.g. a new User to the system who hasn't done anything in the Space yet to trigger Autowatch) , will I still get the Daily Update email??

It would be super great if Atlassian provided a "use-case" settings matrix of what you get/don't get in the different combinations of Watch and Daily Updates

[Rodney Hughes]

I think I am looking for a table something like this to be completed

Subscribe to all blog posts	Subscribe to daily updates	Space Watch All Content	Immediate emails for:	Daily summary email for:
Yes	Yes	Yes	New/edited/deleted Pages New/edited/deleted Blogs New/edited/deleted Comments Attachment upoload/delete	New/edited/deleted Pages New/edited/deleted Blogs New/edited/deleted Comments
Yes	Yes	No
Yes	No	Yes
Yes	No	No
No	Yes	Yes
No	Yes	No
No	No	Yes
No	No	No