Why am I not receiving email notification when a list I am a watcher on is archived?

Question

I added myself as a watcher to a list on my Trello board. I received email notifications for all actions performed on all cards in the list. However, when the list was archived, I did not receive any notification, from the list or any of the cards that anything was archived. According to the Trello documentation, archiving at either the card or list level should result in an email notification to the list watchers.

Iain Dooley · Answer

@Bob Mays okay so when you archive a list, you don't get individual notifications for each card in the list having been archived. You do get a notification for any card being archived so if, for example, you used "archive all cards in this list" instead of "archive list" you would get the outcome you're looking for.

I guess this scenario isn't explicitly excluded in the documentation but it's also not explicitly implied.

What I do know is that Trello sends a notification to registered webhooks for each card archived as part of a list being archived.

Trello's notifications emails aren't a particularly reliable way to parse out information because they're bundled together. Also the "instant" email notification frequency isn't actually instant and if the notification is viewed anywhere else (app/web) then the email won't be sent.

This means that if you were using this as a watching/reporting mechanism you'd have to have a dedicated account that you didn't login with anywhere else to receive those emails, then you'd need to have code that parsed out what was a "card closed" notification and what wasn't because you'd get tonnes of mixed up notifications all at once.

If you're using this as a reporting function you're better off just using the API and registering a web hook.

Bob Mays · Answer

Hi Iain,

The reason I'm trying to get this notification working is I am setting up a list for each month and cards for individual jobs. When a month ends, the list is archived with the cards of completed jobs within that month. My goal is to have a single email, listing all jobs completed throughout the month. I would then be able to import that data from the email to my monthly metrics spreadsheet.

So first I would like to thank you for looking into this issue and relaying that your findings are the same as mine. But I'm not sure I understand what you're saying is reflected in Trello's notification documentation.

My interpretation of the documentation is that, as a watcher on the list, I should receive notification (one email, documenting that each card on the list has been archived) when the list is archived by another member on the board.

Is my interpretation of the documentation correct and the archive notification is not working as stated? Or is my interpretation of the documentation incorrect?

Thanks again, Bob

Iain Dooley · Answer

@Bob Mays hey Robert, I tested this out with 2 different accounts and you're correct that you don't receive any notifications for list level actions regardless of whether you're watching the list or the board.

This is actually reflected in Trello's notifications documentation:

https://help.trello.com/article/799-subscribing-to-cards-lists-and-boards

You can see that when watching a card list or board it states you get the same notifications as you do at the card level for every card in a list or board as well as notifications for any newly created cards.