Friday, January 13, 2017

Too many emails from Confluence?

"I have a rule set up so that all emails from Confluence go strait to the trash."
- Confluence user
"I have 60 unread emails, and most of them are from Confluence."
- Confluence user
"Come on! More emails!?"
- Confluence user

Does this sound like you?  You're not alone, by default Confluence is way too email happy.  The good news is that it doesn't have to stay that way, in this post I'll outline a couple ways you can reduce the clutter.

Changes we've made to Confluence to reduce number of emails

You may have noticed the "Notify watchers" checkbox near the save button when editing a page.  It is checked by default and it's the source of a lot of unnecessary emails.  Likely nobody cares that you've added a comma or removed some formatting.  
To solve this we've installed the NoEmailStorm plugin that gets rid of the checkbox all-together, replacing it with a 'save and notify' button.  Now it's a conscious decision to send out the notification, not the other way around.
Old save page options
New save page options

Changes you can make to reduce number of emails

The most useful emails I get from Confluence are when somebody @mentions me in a page.  The least useful emails I get are from minor edits being done to a page I'm watching, these are the one's we'll focus on reducing.  Here are some tips:

Use the 'Watch' button to toggle watching of pages and spaces

You only get notifications for pages you're watching.   Every page has a "Watch" button where you can toggle your watch for that page and the current space.

Turn off auto-watch and adjust other email settings

When you create, edit or comment on a page you automatically start watching that page.  You can turn off this auto-watch feature in your settings.

Manage what you're currently watching

To see a list of pages and spaces you're currently watching (and stop watching those you're no longer interested in) go to your settings

No comments:

Post a Comment