Disable "Watches" for new users by default

[Chris Fortmueller]

Hi,

currently, when we have a new person joining our company, and we accordingly set up a new confluence account for this user, the user is automatically added as a watcher to our confluence space.

This means that a new employee is bombarded with mails regarding any changes to any page within this space.

I know we can ask each user to use the "Stop Watching" functionality by going to "Watches" in their profile settings. 

Is there, however, a way for us to change the default "watches" of any and all new users we create? That would be a lot more practical if we could simply control the watches for new users on an admin-level.

[Alexis Robert · Accepted solution]

Hi @Chris Fortmueller , 

as far as I know it is not possible to turn this off globally on a Confluence Cloud site. However there is a new feature request being tracked here : https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-39970

Another solution would be to remove new users from the watchers with the Confluence API : https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/confluence/rest/api-group-content-watches/#api-wiki-rest-api-content-id-notification-created-get

Let me know if this helps, 

--Alexis

[Chris Fortmueller]

@Alexis Robert Thanks for your idea and your response! :). We will check if we can integrate a call to the API in our workflow for new employees. Alternatively, we might manually disable the watch on an individual level within this workflow.

[Tim Lange]

Hello @Alexis Robert 

so i managed to get space watchers and their affiliated account id by requesting:

GET /wiki/rest/api/space/SPACEKEY/watch

Followed by:

DELETE /wiki/rest/api/user/watch/space/SPACEKEY?accountid=ACCOUNTID

i'm getting status code 204 which is a sucess by documentation, but the user is not deleted from space watches

Am i getting something wrong here? Is this a bug?

[Darryl Lee]

Answered in the separate question where you asked this.