Yesterday, I have deleted all the pages in the trash of a huge space. Users (a lot) received 660 mails of page and attachment deletions. This is non cense when pages are in the trash....!
Today I received (a lot) of mails from users complaining about the spam generated.

If you decide the way mail should be send, at least you can add some option to trigger for page in the trash.

Michael

derrick2: in 5.5, there is a new rest api (and the associated java api) that will allow a plugin to set the minor edit flag of an attachment during upload. The SOAP and XML-RPC api will NOT have support for this minor attachment flag (due to backwards compatibility concerns). If you have any extra concerns or questions regarding the api usage, please don't hesitate to contact me jxie (at) atlassian (dot) com, or alternatively, ask on https://answers.atlassian.com/ and i ll try to answer it.

Thanks for the feedback guys. I've created CONF-33214 to deal specifically with the notification storms that can arise from the view page.

I don't know that a 'minor change' switch will be the answer, we'll probably address in a couple of other ways, but I've created the ticket for the specific problem for you to watch for resolution.

Not to take away from the complaining, it sounds like there is still a use case that this is a problem for but.... Fantastic! This resolves the biggest complaint my org had since we primarily add attachments (images for specifications) in the editor. and i'm willing to train staff to edit before uploading if they don't want to send notifications. I'll be looking forward to updating to 5.5. You made my day.

Atlassian shows once again that they don't use their own product, certainly not as their clients do. Please reopen this issue. In addition, please deal with all the issues having to do with email notifications initiated by everything in addition to editing a regular post, the only time you offer users or admins the opportunity to avoid sending an alerting email messages.

This issue is not resolved per the original description. Please re-open and provide a mechanism for reducing notifications for all attachment upload strategies.

I agree as well. For our cases, dragging and dropping files onto an existing page should simply not yield any notification. Only not rendering notifications while in edit mode is no suitable solution and would force us to always edit a page before we can 'safely' add attachments without raising notifications. This way, we would lose the powerful option to simply drag & drop extra attachments to an already existing page. To align with other case requirements described in this ticket, a global or per space 'no notifications for attachments' feature indeed seems to be the solution that best covers our collective need.

Please reopen the ticket and take our comments into account.

I agree with the previous comments.
@atlassian. please make a test by yourself with a colleague and change some files every day. After the first changes the other will move all the notifications to the spamfolder. Then you will see that the implementation is useless (pain in the a..)

Ryan Harvey and Bjørn-Willy Arntzen +1

Please reopen the issue.

I completly agree on previous comment. This 'fix' does not address the real issue. A global 'No notification' switch is a must in addition ( or per space)

This does not fix the problem we experience. The specific issue we have is that users can drag many (sometimes 50 or more) attachments to a page when viewing the page. This then triggers 50 attachment notifications at once to each watcher. Instead we'd like to have this be consolidated to a single notification. In lieu of that, the ability to turn off notifications for file upload would help to manage this manually. I think you have misunderstood the end user need, and thereby punted on fixing the real issue. Please reopen and fix the problem.

Will plugins be able to take advantage of this feature as well? In other words, will they be able to attach items to a page without triggering a notification?

Thanks to everyone for the comments and votes on this ticket.

In Confluence 5.5, we've addressed the issue of notification noise from attachments by no longer sending a notification for a file which is attached in the Editor.

We found that when people attach a file in the Editor, it's for it to be displayed in the page (e.g.: an image, and embedded presentation, etc) and what's important is the page create/edit notification, which will show the attachment in its intended context.

Attaching a file on the view page or the attachment screen is an indication that the file itself is important, and watchers of the page will get value from being notified that a new version has been added, so we continue to send these notifications.

We believe this achieves the underlying goal of improving the "signal to noise ratio" of attachment notifications, without making you chose every time you upload an attachment, something that isn't really feasible with drag/drop either.

It has only been 7 years old...I'm not sure why we expect any response.
As an OnDemand customers you have to watch all of their release notes in order to know what is coming up and when it is released. I REALLY hate waking up to 40+ emails on those days when they decide to delete - every removal, update, and add of previous attachments. We have lots of attachments in our own pages because Confluence is not good for managing any type of real excel tables and calculations. In one space alone, we have over 1000 attachments and these are updated (e.g. for every standard change, every customer implementation, etc.)

We all get way too many emails and having Confluence spam us makes the email feature less value because it is not notifying you when you really need to be notified.

This is clearely pointing to a dead end. This is part of the whole concept of participating to a collaborating project.
They take advantage of priorising the case or improvement.
I'm sure if one of the client is IBM, Microsoft or another big one, they would response immediately...

Michael

maybe it's up to us not to renew the licence until we get an answer to the questtions?

One of our clients is asking about this feature as well. In a comment in a related ticket dating last week, a promising gesture has been made about the seriousness that Atlassian would hold in resolving this ticket. If possible, please update the "Fix Version/s" of this ticket so that we may understand when this feature could be expected. Thanks!

@Atlassian Could someone please comment on the progess of this issue? Are there any concrete plans for providing a solution?

I saw this completed on Sprint End 25-Feb, when is the expected release date? Thanks!

Will this also address the issue of sending email notifications when a page is moved and it sends notifications for all associated attachments about the move, too?
We got bit by this hard because we moved approximately 200 pages by moving 2 parent pages to a new space, but had over 1000 attachments to them and received 1200 notifications.

Whoo hoo! this is the happiest day of the week seeing this issue added to a sprint! I just ran around the office giving random people hi-fives...

Judging from other issues, Atlassian is probably reluctant to resolve this issue by adding more user configuration options. It makes the system too complex for most users and difficult to support. I think a more likely solution is to allow overriding notification schemes per space (like suggested in CONF-30826). There should be at least two default options:
1. Default - current scheme
2. Light - no notifications from attachments, notify watchers box is disabled by default

In addition, 3rd party plugins should be able to add custom notification schemes.

+1 for this feature. It's appears also that if you're Editing In Office a document, each time you hit save on the document it triggers a notification. That can be annoying especially if a user hits Save multiple times to make sure they don't lose their work when they are on a big document with a lot of changes. HELP!!!

Perhaps it would be as easy as adding an Option in the Notifications section for a user's profile around attachments. You could have checkboxes:

Notify me when new attachments are added to pages I'm watching
Notify me when attachments are edited on pages I'm watching
Notify me when an attachment is deleted on pages I'm watching

That would be fairly simple I would think and easy to implement. No?

This would be super helpful. Inundating watchers with these notifications for essentially one page update is unnecessary and may annoy them enough to unwatch a page. As it is now, if I am uploading several images or attachments to a page, I have to restrict the page to just me, so others will not get multiple email notifications of new attachments. While this is a workaround that does prevent the unwanted notifications, when I restrict the page, it and all of its child pages are then only able to be viewed by me. Please give us a better option by allowing us to turn off notifications for images and attachments.

Honestly, I don't know what the problem here is.

The beauty of confluence is how easy it is to add attachments (like images with copy/paste) which is why we do it all the time.

This entire issue sounds like an if statement that needs to be added !!
if (! flagForSendingOneEmailForEveryAttachment)
sendemailToUser("new attachment")

This issue is open for almost 7 years now. I don't know why such an annoying feature cannot be fixed.

Lets hope Atlassian will do it soon.

We are using Confluence as a customer portal and it's hard to explain every business user, why there are so many emails after uploading new files. We would appreciate if there is any solution. Thank you.

Hello Atlassian,
For us, Confluence is an important team communication tool. Therefore, the watching function is a great opportunity for us.
The notification for each file that is uploaded this advantage leads to absurdity.
To solve it, for example, could the ability to give only then having the opportunity to trigger a notification (Approximately by Confluence queries: Want to send a notification?). Otherwise, it would be able to set at least one system-wide improvement that add files no notifications trigger and in the appropriate page, alternatively, the possibility also exists "Notify on Attachment" select.
But holy moly, why is there not a fix after this long time?
(sorry for my broken english..)

Yesterday a user attach 20 files and it was really, really annoying to get for every attachement an email
The users now didn't want to get any mail from confluence but the they didn't get informed about the important news

Please fix! I've also had to send out an email describing how to automatically move these notifications into the deleted folder in Outlook. This is having a negative impact on our adoption rate.

The users getting so upset, I convinced our IT department to create a "spam" rule on the Exchange Server with the following criteria:
1. The From ends with ' (Confluence) [NO_REPLY@blabla.com]'
2. The Subject starts with '[confluence] My Space Name >'
3. The Body contains the string ' added a file to the page '

This is an ugly workaround but at least I stop loosing subscribers...

Hello Atlassian Guys,

I'm still surprise that for some old bugs like this one, recording 105 votes, you have not been up with a fix!
Almost all of our Department are loughing at us because of this annoying mailing.

I have written an sql report that create 305 images every month in one page. I will let you imagine what happend every month for those that follow that page ;-(

I will also propose as for a recommandation of the solution that the user should be able to disallow a page from sending notification. Tipically in my situation where it is a report that fill the attachment.

So please, at least, propose a fix if this issue cant be resolved.

Michael

Yes, please. It's so annoying and we all didn't want it.

Yes, Atlassian, please do something ... please ...

Come on, Atlassian, do something!

Atlassian, any update about this?
I got lots of complains from the users for this.

I have created a page using confluence API and running some batch process to add attachemnts to the page.
Is there any API support to stop mail notifications while adding attachments to the page.

I really need this! We have lot of gallery pages...

this is a really annoying feature.

Quite disappointing to have an issue with so many votes and still no plan to do it.

+1 MUST HAVE, PLS.

The while editing notifications is still by far the biggest complain across our company with confluence. I can't see how anyone would find this behavior desirable. Getting a notification of an image added to a page, and when you go to the page you can't even see it because the user hasn't saved the page yet. This seems like a no brainier change.

My main concern is about notification sent out immediatelly when adding attachements during an edition session.
The proposal would cover my editors needs and would make other people look at the notification (instead of seeing them as spam messages).

This is our most wanted feature.

I too agree with "No attachment notifications if they are added while you are editing"

I like to get a page right and then flick out a notification to watchers, I can't do this when they get emails about every picture I put on the page before I hit 'Save' and it notify's everyone

"No attachment notifications if they are added while you are editing" Would be fantastic!

This is a huge complaint in my company since i write product specifications in Confluence and i add and edit a lot of images which kicks of 100's of worthless emails notifying them that i added a mock ups, then removed the mock up... and since its a product specification a lot of people in the company want to watch the page to keep in the know of what we have planned but have had to stop since its most frequently just an uploaded image spam. I use photoshop for mock ups and often use screen capture copy and paste directly into the page. So i can't speak for the plug in users, but i would imagine the situation would be the same.

Attaching w/out editing a page is less of an issue for us, but It would seem if you were using the upload page adding "notify watchers" check box by the upload would be a sensible solution from what i know. but again its not as big of a complaint as the notifications while editing.

Chris, this default behavior seems like a great solution!

It doesn't address Andy's problem, such as if someone must edit a file offline because they are traveling and cannot sustain a file editing connection, but your proposed solution is a great start and it will address a large number of the instances where an attachment upload while editing doesn't deserve a notification email.

What do you think of this additional idea: a space-level option such as "do not send notifications for attachments uploads/updates". Then users would receive no notifications about attachment changes, and users would need to send a manual alert or update a page that referred to the attachments. This is a clumsy option if you're looking for a fine level of control, but it might suit some people and it might be fairly easy to implement. Of course, it might be impossibly difficult to implement; the only reason it seems possible is because you already have options for watching pages and watching blogs, so maybe it wouldn't be too difficult to add an option to watch attachments or not.

Hi Crhis - thanks for putting some thought into this long requested issue. I will leave others to comment on the defaults you are proposing.

However, they are not our main problem, which is users using the Add Attachment function to make repeated changes to attachments and sending out reams of spam.

For that we need a minor changes checkbox that is available to the user at the time they are posting the attachment. Only the user posting the attachment has the knowledge to determine whether or not it is worth notifying watchers.

Hi Everyone,
Thanks for all your comments and feedback on this feature request. We're currently thinking about possible solutions for this problem.

To be frank, we would rather try to find a sensible default instead of adding more settings/options to the user interface. In order to do so, I wanted to share with you guys what we are contemplating:

No attachment notifications if they are added while you are editing
We are thinking of implementing a fix so that if you are editing a Confluence page and attach files (e.g. Images or via drag and drop on the edit screen) we automatically suppress notifications. Why? Our primary assumption here is that if a user is uploading files while they are editing, nine times out of ten they are embedding the file in the page. So we dont want to bother the user with duplicate emails which are for the same "change".

What about if I'm not editing and upload files?
What about if you drag and drop or attach files form the view page or upload screen? In this scenario we would send the normal update notifications as usual. Why? We are confident here that the primary example here is "Adding more files" to a file list for example. In that case, because no page update notifications are sent, you want to know of new files being added.

What about add-ons?
We would also expose an API to plugin developers so plugins like Balsamiq and Gliffy could use this to avoid sending notifications for their files.

Would this default behaviour work for you guys or can you see any cases where this would not work?

I can't make any promises of if or when this gets addressed, but we are very keen to get this problem resolved as well and just wanted to share with you guys what we are thinking to get your feedback. What do you guys think?

Cheers,
Chris

This is frustrating seeing a low hanging fruit sitting here for long....

Hi any news on this issue.
It is a really annoying feature.
Please add an option to not inform the watchers!

This kind of unresolved issue goes on and on. It's been years (back at least to 2006) since it was first brought up for attachments, moved pages, delete content, and other function that don't have a minor change or no notification option.

When users ask me why this isn't fixed, I tell them it's because the Atlassian developers must not use their own tools and they don't actually listen to those that do. Do we have to wait until Confluence 5?

Using Atlassian tools means your inbox is about to explode. +1 for this feature to reduce the amount of email our customers must dig through.