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Suggestion
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Resolution: Won't Fix
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Confluence 3.5 introduced Autowatch - the ability to automatically watch content you contribute to. This feature is enabled by default and is configured per user in their settings. We have had some feedback from customers that they would like a global setting to turn this off.
Hi Everyone,
After much discussion we've concluded we won't be implementing this global setting.
Why are we not doing this?
- We believe the majority of users want to know if others comment or update on their content
After speaking to a lot of customers about how they interact with the system, a constant problem we hear is that users create content and have no idea that other people updated or commented content they contributed to. Secondly, we think it is counter intuitive to ask everyone that creates or edits a page to then secondly add themselves as watcher to the page. Manually adding yourself as a watcher is more suited for those that discover content they want to stay notified of any updates of (and haven't necessary contributed to it) - A majority of users use email as their primary notification, not RSS.
What about those users who only use RSS or who do not want to know of any updates to content they've contributed to?
Whilst this is a valid use case, we believe this is the minority of users and because of this we have created a user-specific setting for those users. If you believe the majority of your users will enable this setting, then we have the global workaround available which is documented below.
Workaround
The config lives in an XML file: <confluence install>/confluence/WEB-INF/lib/confluence-x.x.x.jar/preferences-default.xml.
You need to change the boolean value to false, thus:
<preference type="Boolean"> <name>confluence.prefs.watch.my.own.content</name> <value>false</value> </preference>
Then place it as <confluence install>/confluence/WEB-INF/classes/preferences-default.xml and restart Confluence.
For more details on modifying jarred config files, please refer to this doc: http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Editing+Files+within+JAR+Archives
So if we are not doing this, what are we going to do instead?
It sounds like a lot of administrators here are concerned about other related problems to notifications. In the long term we will be looking at improving the way Confluence sends you notifications. Here are some related issues we are thinking about for the long-term roadmap which will help solve some of the problems you have described on this issue:
- Making watching more versatile
- Providing more powerful ways of managing your watches (CONF-12314, CONF-8458)
- Looking at digest notifications (
CONF-14485,CONF-7612) - Looking at adapting the "minor change" setting to not add you as a watcher if checked.
Sherif Mansour
Confluence Product Manager
smansour at atlassian dot com
- is related to
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CONFSERVER-5794 Don't send any notifications to disabled users
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- Closed
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- Closed
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- Gathering Interest
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- Gathering Interest
- relates to
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- Closed
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- Closed
[CONFSERVER-22070] Provide a global admin setting to turn off autowatch
Confluence moved away from sw-related work and now is used widely as async project documentation. This shuts off 95% of the users in my space that are not tech-savvy.
I need a way to disable autowatch on a per-project basis, or globally. I have a project that functions as an in and out board where employees can mark themselves out of the office and include alternate contact information if they prefer.
While auto-watch is a nice feature for single-author pages or small teams, it's a major disruption for pages that have many (100+) editors as employees make changes to a centralized page.
I know Atlassian has shown resistance to adding this feature in the past, but I think there are several use cases that are being overlooked, since they are impossible to implement while auto-watch is enforced globally.
- In/Out boards
- Event signup lists
- mail logs
- combined monthly reports
essentially, this is a show stopping-hindrance for any project with many (100+) editors of the same page.
Groan. Having come back to Confluence after not using it for many years, it's painful to see that this is still something that Atlassian thinks is a good idea. Having to tick a little box EVERY SINGLE TIME FOR EVERY SINGLE PAGE to stop a notification going out is a PITA. As an admin, I want the ability to make the opposite the default behaviour and stop everyone's mailbox from filling up with thousands of notifications of every teensy weensy change to every single page.
The same goes for setting notifications; you can either only set it for an entire space or on a per page basis. You can't see it for a branch and include all sub-branches. To acheive the equivalent, you have to go and select notificaitons for EVERY SINGLE PAGE ONE PAGE AT A TIME in that branch and then keep adding them when more pages are added. So tedious and time consuming.
Looks like the effort to fix this was revived: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-39970. Vote it up!
Six years and this bullsh*** is still an issue. I can't belief that providing a global admin setting to turn of autowatch is such a thing.
And our users also tend to mark confluence mails as spam.
If this was Atlassians intention then they succeded. If not... hmm well... :-/
Francis Woon
added a comment - This doesn't work in 5.10.8 but works in 5.10.6...this is really a no-brainer that admin should easily turn everything on/off for all users/specific user instead of asking our few hundred users to do this themselves....for a company that's starting off with using Confluence, users need to pickup basic settings that we educate them as training from start..and NOT be overwhelmed with tons of email notifications...because NOT everyone who comment/edit/create a page wanna be notified every time from then on...that makes up 99% of our entire company being irritated by this pesky feature which admin has to tell everyone to go do it themselves...making us admin look rather silly....
Francis Woon
added a comment - This doesn't work in 5.10.8 but works in 5.10.6...this is really a no-brainer that admin should easily turn everything on/off for all users/specific user instead of asking our few hundred users to do this themselves....for a company that's starting off with using Confluence, users need to pickup basic settings that we educate them as training from start..and NOT be overwhelmed with tons of email notifications...because NOT everyone who comment/edit/create a page wanna be notified every time from then on...that makes up 99% of our entire company being irritated by this pesky feature which admin has to tell everyone to go do it themselves...making us admin look rather silly.... Same problem for us, users which have not created the page or space nor have actively set themselfes as watchers, seems to be set as watchers for spaces for some reason. They have added it as favourite, though, to be able to see the newsfeed IN Confluence and to be able to access the space from the sidepanel, but they did not expect the enormous amounts of spam they received...
People just mark everything from Confluence as spam, and the result is that they don't receive any update from it.
We just enabled the mail server, just to discover that all users have autowatch on just about everything.
Disaster, yes! Autowatch is not a feature, it's a bug since it's a default!
The most bizarre thing is that this is defined as "resolved". No. Not at all. Huge problem. Really huge.
I would like to vote for this. Our users are not able to manage their own watch lists, and we have thousands of e-mails going out. Our exchange administrators keep telling me that our queue is enormous, and our exchange servers are being marked as spam by our partners mail servers. Atlassian, please reconsider this functionality.
Decision needs to be revisited. I see use cases where users contribute once to a page and updates don't provide any value. It's just noise.