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Can JIRA's autowatch be disabled?

Mike Curwen NL

The new 'Autowatch' feature in version 5.0.3 of JIRA is enabled for everyone by default. We've so far set up our projects and notifications in such a way that having the reporter auto-watch their created issues will be unacceptable. [1]

Is there a setting that can disable this feature site-wide?

[1] the reason is: we auto-create issues by email and set the reporter field, but our notifications do NOT email the reporter (we use JIRA behind-the-scenes). We use the watcher field to add people like Analysts, Devs, Ops people, etc, and so 'Watchers' is on most notifications. As far as our users know, they email "Help Desk" and further communication is via email with a real person (not a JIRA system). With reporters being auto-watched, we're hooped I think.

Accepted answers

JamieA

It's a bit of an oversight that they have not made this disable-able, imho. It's not even a plugin module so you can't disable it.

If you can't recompile a class, you may have to rethink.

All comments

Ramiro P

Hi Mike, here I found some documentation about how to disable the autowatch tool:

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/JIRA+5.0.3+Release+Notes#JIRA503ReleaseNotes-Autowatchissuesyoucreateorcommenton

I believe there isn't a way to change it by default, you should go to every user profile and change the option.

Mike Curwen NL

Not gonna happen, I have over 300 profiles, to which I don't have the password. And I don't want them to change it back either. I need a way to disable autowatch entirely, or I'll have to rethink and redo our usage of reporter field, watcher field, and notification schemes.

JamieA

It's a bit of an oversight that they have not made this disable-able, imho. It's not even a plugin module so you can't disable it.

If you can't recompile a class, you may have to rethink.

Mike Curwen NL

darn, I was hoping it was a plugin. I don't currently have a staging env, so couldn't check. Thanks Jamie.

Norman Abramovitz

You might need to resort to SQL and update the database once you figure out what records are created/updated when a user disables autowatch.

JamieA

You could easily run a few lines of groovy to change the autowatch preference for users, but the problem is when new users join. I guess you could write a UserEvent listener which turns it off whenever someone signs up.

SuhailM

Hi,

Do you have any idea in which JIRA Database table this is stored??

Regards,

Mike Curwen NL

I have found and voted for this issue: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-28268

Please do the same, if you think this needs fixing!

SuhailM

You can disable by wrtiting a service.here is the code-

private void deactivateAutoWatch() {
UserManager userManager = ComponentAccessor.getUserManager();
UserPreferencesManager preferencesManager = ComponentAccessor.getUserPreferencesManager();
Collection<User> allUsers = userManager.getUsers();
for (User user : allUsers) {
try {
preferencesManager.getPreferences(user).setBoolean(PreferenceKeys.USER_AUTOWATCH_DISABLED, true);
} catch (AtlassianCoreException e) {
log.error("AutoWatchDisableService Error:" + e);
}
}

}

carlitos.melgar@izote.net

Anybody have a clue on where this can be updated via SQL?

carlitos.melgar@izote.net

Really appreciate the code!!! I understand what it does. However, I do apologize as I'm just know .Net and have no idea how to write a service for Jira. Could you help me with some tips?

I found this on google: http://www.j-tricks.com/1/post/2010/11/jira-service.html But have no clue on how to setup Eclipse (I assume) and all the other stuff needed to create a service for Jira.

Any help will greatly be appreciated.

Thanks,

Carlos

carlitos.melgar@izote.net

Unfortunately no. I'm only the user (administrator) of Jira for my office. Just upgraded from 5.0 to 5.0.6 and got into trouble by this autowatch feature. I'm sure it helps someone, but it sure sucks for my setup.

SuhailM

Have you created any plugin in jira??

AlexanderR

just set up the atlassian-sdk:
https://developer.atlassian.com/display/DOCS/Set+up+the+Atlassian+Plugin+SDK+and+Build+a+Project

then do any plugin tutorial, e.g. https://developer.atlassian.com/display/JIRADEV/Plugin+Tutorial+-+Creating+a+Custom+Field+in+JIRA

that should get you started. (you will then know, that you just have to go into the directory with the pom-file, execute atlas-mvn eclipse:eclipse and import the project into eclipse)

HermannS

I had the very same problem and tried the direct DB-access route but with no success.

So I installed the Script Runner plugin and used the groovy script of Jamie (thanks for that, Jamie!). It works really well, but I recommend a small change to it: Add a check if autowatch isn't disabled already. This change makes it run almost twice as fast (slightly more than a minute compared to two minutes for my 42.000 users installation):

import com.atlassian.jira.component.ComponentAccessor
import com.atlassian.jira.user.preferences.PreferenceKeys
 
def userManager = ComponentAccessor.getUserManager()
def preferencesManager = ComponentAccessor.getUserPreferencesManager()
userManager.getUsers().each {
  user -&gt;
  if (! preferencesManager.getPreferences(user).getBoolean(PreferenceKeys.USER_AUTOWATCH_DISABLED)) {
    preferencesManager.getPreferences(user).setBoolean(PreferenceKeys.USER_AUTOWATCH_DISABLED, true)   
  }
}

Andrew

Hi,

You can now configure autowatch for all users in JIRA 5.2.2. More details in the release notes:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/JIRA+5.2.2+Release+Notes

Kind Regards,
Andrew

Daniel Varela Santoalla

In our case what we would need is to have autowatch enable or disabled per-project. In some cases we would like it happening but we do have some others projects that we want to handle as Mike Curwen says, in a "JIRA behind-the-scenes" mode.

To just enable or disable for the whole instance is a bit of a shotgun approach, in my view.

Per Sundstedt

Hi Jamie,

regarding your solution about autowatch disabled, is there anyway to use this solution on one project? (that this rule will not change for alla projects) ?

If you have script runner, the following lines pasted into the script admin panel will disable autowatching for all users:

import com.atlassian.jira.component.ComponentAccessor

import com.atlassian.jira.user.preferences.PreferenceKeys

def userManager = ComponentAccessor.getUserManager()

def preferencesManager = ComponentAccessor.getUserPreferencesManager()

userManager.getUsers().each {user ->

preferencesManager.getPreferences(user).setBoolean(PreferenceKeys.USER_AUTOWATCH_DISABLED, true)

}

Thanks for quick reply!

/Per Sundstedt

Christoph Leithner

Auto watch can be configured in the JIRA UI

for all users in JIRA Administration under System -> User Default Settings -> Autowatch own issues
for each user individually in the user profile

Priscila Vega

Hi @JamieA ,

Is there a way to set all users autowatch preference to "Inherit from global settings" using scriptrunner?

Thanks in advance!

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