Switch off recommendation notifications on platform level

Jan-Willem de Bruin

Users get notifications from Confluence about pages that might be of interest for them. Unfortunately Confluence also invites them to take a look at pages that are not meant for them. Pages that are none of anybodies busines, for instance minutes from meetings or pages created by WorkFlow used for filling in reimbursement forms and only need to be seen by a select group of people.

Instead of switching this off per user (what a user can do himself - but then switch on as well), I would like to completely switchoff the notification system for the whole platform. Is this possible and if so, where can I do this?

Rodney Hughes

Hehehe   I understand the frustration of notification.  There is probably a way to turn off the email sending process at the system level ... ???

But I always say that since Confluence is a Knowledge Management System, we must remember that knowledge is not knowledge unless people know when knowledge is created or changes, and hence the need for notifications  ... otherwise just store the information on your own PC where no-one else can see it!

But yes, some knowledge in the Confluence Spaces should only be known by a select set of people.

First you can control who has access to the individual Spaces.

Then within the Space you can set independently Page View Restrictions and Page Edit Restrictions.

If you have been clever in the Space set up with creating Permission Groups (e.g. owner/member/observer ... maybe more ... we use six) and a User is assigned to have a particular Permission Group for that Space, applying those Page Restrictions is dead easy, otherwise it is username-by-username

If a Page has a View Restriction applied, then all child pages to that View Restricted page will inherent the same View Restriction - so you can easily "hide" things like Minutes of Meeting to the select group of nominated people who need to see them.  Note that notifications will only be sent to those people who are allowed to view the page - others won't know the page exists or anything has changed.

Edit Restriction is a little different in that you have to apply them page-by-page.