Can a Confluence administrator generate an email distrubution list based on registered users?

[Susan Parker]

There are some rare occasions when I, as the administrator, would like to email all of my registered users - for instance, about the status of a bug fix that I have been working with Atlassian support on. Can a Confluence administrator generate an email distrubution list based on registered users? I have poked around, but cannot find an obvious solution.

[Sune Mølgaard]

I guess you could always try the following query in the database, and use that list to send mails from another program (do remember to mask recipient addresses, perhaps by using BCC: instad of TO: fields):

SELECT email_address from cwd_user;

Best regards,

[Bastiaan Jansen]

Hi Susan,

It is not possible to send an email throught Confluence. The reason for this is because Confluence is already meant as a collaboration tool to "replace" emails.
To update your users you could create a page or blog post informing the users about the updates. You can share pages and blogpost via email if needed.

[Susan Parker]

Thank you. I think Confluence is meant to reduce, not replace emails - otherwise, why would Confluence provide so many email notification opportunities, including watch notifications and new user invitations? I am glad that Confluence downplays email. However, there are occasions when email, used sparingly, is the most efficient and effective means of alerting a user-base. Sure, the content of an important update can live in a blog post or wiki page, but that's not what I am referring to. I suppose that I can manually create a distribution list, but as my user-base grows, that is error-prone and labor intensive. I could also "force" users to watch a page or a blog that is not foolproof either. I have been using Confluence since about 2008/9 (?), originally a hosted instance and now an On Demand instance. I seem to recall administrators for the hosted instance being able to do something like this. I would have liked a feature like this to give my users a heads up about the recent upgrade.

[Robert Lauriston]

"The reason for this is because Confluence is already meant as a collaboration tool to 'replace' emails."

Typical clueless and arrogant Atlassian rationalization of a usability problem.

I need to bring the server down to upgrade to close your security hole.

My Confluence server sends tons of "watch" email notifications. It's an essential part of any wiki. Letting me as admin send announcements to all would increase the volume of email my server sends by approximately 0.01%.

[Susan Parker]

Ha ha - those were my sentiments, though I tried to express them a little more delicately.