How do you auto-subscribe all users to a Confluence blog or space?

[Logan G Hawkes]

I have created a blog on a Confluence space and I'd like to auto-subscribe all Confluence users to that blog. As far as I've been able to determine each individual user has to make an explicit act to watch a space. Even as a Confluence admin there doesn't seem to be a way to automatically subscribe a set users. Is there some way to do this that's less klugely and less risky than editing the database directly?

I assure you that I will only use this power for good.

Followup: I dug into the database and found that the follow_connections table in the database holds the relationship indicating that one user is following another.

mysql> desc follow_connections;
+--------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field        | Type         | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+--------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| CONNECTIONID | bigint(20)   | NO   | PRI | NULL    |       |
| FOLLOWER     | varchar(255) | NO   | MUL | NULL    |       |
| FOLLOWEE     | varchar(255) | NO   | MUL | NULL    |       |
+--------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
mysql> select * from follow_connections limit 3;
+-----------+--------+--------+
| 3141591   | lisa   | marge  |
| 3141592   | marge  | bart   |
| 3141593   | marge  | lisa   |
| 3141594   | bart   | lisa   |
+-----------+--------+--------+

What I can't find is where the database stores the relationship indicating a subscription to a blog or a space, rather than to a specific user. Any ideas?

[Renjith Pillai · Accepted solution]

The easiest workaround that we did was to use the group these people belongs to (you will be mostly having a group to determine permissions for the space), create a user in Confluence with the email id of this group, login as that user, and simply watch the space. So for every change in the space, a notification will be generated for this group emailid and everyone receives it.

[Logan G Hawkes]

I like it! One issue: all our email is handled by an Exchange server. What I think you're suggesting is that I create a Confluence user that an email address with the same address as that of a distribution list that holds the names of all the people who have Confluence accounts. Due to the size and complexity of our sprawling organization there isn't one Exchange alias that covers all the people who use Confluence. Moreover, a custom list would have to be created and maintained by our IT department. I'd rather not get into the reasons, but this would be far more complex and difficult than just calling Roy and Moss.

Or am I missing something?

[Renjith Pillai]

Yes, I meant exactly the same. If not for one group, may a set of groups you can create and users and watch the space. Reuse the existings groups managed by the IT department.

Btw, how are you managing the permissions for the spaces in Confluence? Is it open for everyone?

[Logan G Hawkes]

"Permissions? Why?", he said suspiciously.

Permissions are relatively open. You need an account to see anything but if you have an account you can see all but one space. Everyone has add, edit, attach, and comment permissions for visible spaces. I'd button things down more if it was public, but the whole thing is restricted to a corporate network and firewalled away from the outside world. Being as the whole point is to get people to share information I've decided to err on the side of openness. Anyone can make their stuff private, but the default is to make it public. For example, my personal blog is private. I use it as a notepad, a link dump repository, and a place to spitball and flesh out ideas I'm not ready to make public. My public blog is far more polished and focused, hence the request from management to auto-subscribe the entire team.

[Renjith Pillai]

Oh Okie :) Sounds perfect in an enterprise scenario.

[Ann Marie Guzzi]

Any update here?

[Christoph]

Is this still the way to go end of 2019?

[Nick Muldoon]

Hi Logan,

An alternative to the workaround Renjith suggested is to use Better Blogs for Confluence which allows you to subscribe a group to notifications of new blog posts in a space.

Better Blogs leads to better understanding shares the background on this product.

Thanks Logan, have a great day.

Regards,
Nicholas Muldoon
Arijea

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