Build a new gadget that would be added to one's dashboard that would show all issues that have been updated in some way that they "typically" would have been notified on via email (reporter, watcher - assignee would be optional).

Instead of sending an email (or as an option, one could choose to only send notifications, only load into this gadget, or do both). As the user reviews the change to an issue, they would check off that they are done with it, and it would fall off the gadget and no longer be displayed.

I am desperately trying to reduce our reliance on email, and although email notifications are great for some things, it would be far better if most of this information was just contained in the JIRA tool itself, and one could go to the dashboard, review this gadget for a list of all issues that had some change to it that have yet to be reviewed, and then check it off in the gadget since you have now reviewed it. This would allow a dramatic reduction in emails being sent.

Perhaps additional functionality would be an option to have a digest sent from this gadget on some period - say daily or weekly - to remind the person to go to review this gadget, but this would be 1 email a day or week as opposed to the at least ~70+ that I get now each week due to people updating an issue in some way that I either reported or that I am a watcher on (I am in a leadership role, so I am tied to a bunch of issues in our system).

I believe the ability to send out an instant email notification for someone who was just assigned an issue should still be allowed, but perhaps optionally. I personally would leave this set to instant when I am assigned to an issue, and I would ask my team to do the same, but some users might want this to be an option.

I know there is a "to do" list macro for Confluence that is similar to this request. The difference is that this would be dynamically built by the JIRA gadget, and it would have to retain (persistent) all changes that you have not reviewed since the time the gadget was added to the dashboard. Once the item was checked, it would be permanently removed from the gadget and no longer display (just like when I delete my notification email out of my inbox never to look at it again), but obviously all historical data is still retained in JIRA.