Improving the way you manage notifications

[#1]

We’re currently rolling out updates to the notification experience. If you don’t see these updates yet, they should be available soon.

It’s now easier to manage web notifications from your Confluence and Jira sites. Notifications from all of your sites will appear in the one list, and you can filter notifications to show only those that are unread – helping you to stay focused on what’s important.

What’s changing?

• You can now filter notifications to show only the ones you haven’t read – so you’re always up to date on the latest activity.

• See all of the notifications from your Jira and Confluence sites in the one place.

• Notifications are no longer deleted, so nothing is ever lost.

Instead of deleting notifications, you can hide the ones you don’t want to see. Select Mark as read on notifications you've read, and then remove them from view by selecting the Only show unread filter.

If you want to see a notification later, select Mark as unread, and it will continue to appear in your list.

Tips to manage your notifications:

• Mark individual notifications as 'read’ or ‘unread’ by clicking the circle next to each notification.

• Hide notifications that you’ve already read by toggling the Only show unread option.

• Mark a notification as Mark as unread to continue seeing it in your list.

• Mark all of your notifications as read by selecting Mark all as read.

• Notifications are automatically removed from the list after 30 days. Older notifications can still be found in your email.

[Nikki Zavadska _Appfire_]

Having all notifications under one roof is really helpful! Thanks 🎉

[Nikki Zavadska _Appfire_]

A quick question...

Is it possible to switch off notifications from certain sites that I don't want to see there?

I have some test Jira instances and now I can see notifications from these in my main Jira instance that I use for work 🙈

[Jana Paulech]

Hi @Nikki Zavadska _Appfire_, great to hear having notifications in one place is useful. Thanks for the feedback. Currently, no, you cannot switch off web notifications in one instance. 

While I am nots sure of your test instance set-up and/or what kinds of notifications you are receiving, a few potential workarounds might be:

• un-watching/un-assigning any Jira tickets that are sending you notifications
• creating a new user for that test account for future testing

Thanks again for the feedback, great to hear from you.

[Nikki Zavadska _Appfire_]

Hi @Jana Paulech , thanks for getting back to me!

I think we'll go with the approach of having different emails for our test instances to keep notifications clean 🧼 

[Maicon Vieira]

What about pushing those notifications to chrome?

[Paul]

I'm not happy at all with the change. I need to have some read notification visible as well as the possibility to remove/hide the duplicates (the notifications for the same issue #. In the previous version, I was keeping unread those which I wanted to review later marking as read those read but still needed to check and I was removing manually the duplicates. Basically, I was using the notification list like a quick, ad-hoc to do list.

[Jana Paulech]

Hi @Paul , sorry to hear that. Have you considered using the mark as read and mark as unread to manage your notifications list?

To elaborate:

• If you have the unread filter enabled, you can click on the blue dot over on the right to mark a notification as read (essentially hide it) without clicking through.
• You can also 'mark as unread' an already read notification from the "all notifications" list by clicking that same button to essentially keep it for later in the unread list.
• Then, your "unread notification" list (filter enabled) is kind of like your "to-do list", and the "all notifications" list (filter disabled) is a sort of "archive" that you can access should you need.

Regarding your comment on general noisiness of a Jira issue, we do want to look at other ways to help solve this. We want to look at improvements like grouping multiple notifications by their issue or page in the future to help here. Still early days, but that is the thinking. :) 

Thanks for reaching out, hopefully the above workflow may work for you.

[Jana Paulech]

@Maicon Vieira Thanks for the feedback. No, we don't do chrome browser notifications for these.

Would be keen to know what specific notifications you would be looking for in browser as these can be quite disruptive if all notifications were to be sent. Would it be mainly mentions?

[Paul]

Hi @Jana Paulech , of course I tried those before jumping to complain :) but they are not enough to obtain the same result. Basically, what was useful for me was to be able to see in the same time the read and unread notifications but without duplicates which I was removing manually. The workarounds you were proposing also are not achieving the same goal because I was making a difference between what I really read and what I will see later.

IMHO, bringing back the delete action would be the fastest because you had it there. Otherwise, an option to hide or group duplicates could be a solution. But in the same time, I'm not sure if seeing the duplicate notifications brings so much value as long as the History tab provides a list of what happened.

As a side note, making the issue number smaller in the notification list was also a "non-improvement" (sic) for me.

[Kirk Hayter]

This is another Jira "enhancement" that actually provides negative value, for me anyway. We need a way to "manage" notifications. For example, user clicks on notification and page loads with notification box added, where the user can then keep that notification open or even better, prioritize that notification and manage them all that way. Like a to-do list like one of the other users here was saying. That's a game-changer for us users. That's heading towards value!

Now, I click on the notification and open the page and realize that I need to action this but for later, but now it's been marked as read, and I have to go back and re-enable view all read items, and then search for that one that I just opened, and then unmark that one as unread.

Or the best "workaround" for your enhancement is really to right-mouse click on the notification, opening it in a new window. Then, I can go back and set it to read. Basically, going back to the way that it worked, just with more steps. 

[Andrew Murdoch]

Honestly, who wanted this change? 

When adding features that are going to cause workflow annoyances please make sure they can be disabled for users that don't want them.  I see no benefit to the new workflow, as once I've read a notification I want to discard it to keep my notification area clean, as that is it's primary function.

I've previously requested the addition of an "Audit Log", which would solve the problem with the notifications, and provide better functionality to trace and understand actions across the platform.

Please change this new functionality so that it can be turned off on a user by user basis, because it's annoying.

[Susanne Ertle]

The problem is the same in Confluence.

The Delete button was very useful, to just keep the important notifications and get rid of all the other ones. Now I have to scroll through pages and pages every time when trying to find one.

When reviewing pages with inline comments this generates enormous amounts of notifications. Some, where the problem has not yet been resolved need keeping, most of them can be deleted after reading and handling the comment. Having this huge list and trying to find the notification really is wasting time that can be used for solving the comment.

Please get the delete button back!

[Anna Wren]

Hello,

I'm feeling much the same as others in this thread - I've been using the notifications as a to-do list of sorts. Each morning I come into around 100 email notifications about updates, comments and new assignments to me and it's overwhelming. I begin the day usually, by ignoring these emails, and looking at the notifications instead. I read all of them, deleting those that do not require my attention (duplicates, or 'user has mentioned you in this comment' but I've also been assigned the task) and keep those which I need to look at. Throughout the day as I action them I then delete them. 

This morning for example, I have 4 notifications for one task, usually I would delete 3 of them and action only 1. Today I can't do that. I've tried marking all but one as unread, but then when I read the last one it disappears! If I can't action this ticket right away (need to consult other departments etc) I "loose" it for a while and can't easily find it without going back to viewing all unread notifications. 

Not being able to delete the notifications is going to make my job so much harder! Is there any way to switch this off for our account, or even me as a user?

[Ben Edwards]

This is an incredibly disruptive change @Jana Paulech @Caroline Jeppe . You just ruined my workflow and there was absolutely no communication about this change rolling out or a way to provide feedback on this before hand. As a customer this feels incredibly yucky. As clearly evidenced in this thread this was super short sighted. I will be issuing support to go back to the old way and am seriously considering moving my organization off of Jira Cloud altogether. Please reconsider decisions that will negatively impact your customers that actually use the product.

[Andrew Murdoch]

I agree with @Ben why should we continue to use a platform that doesn't care about it's users? 

Jira has gone from a fairly decent tool, to something that barely edges out Microsoft Project, which is widely regarded as the brown runny standard of PM tools.  Why is Atlassian constantly trying to emulate Microsoft in how it rolls out features, instead of emulating Open Source projects where the options are OPTIONAL, and can activated based on user preference?

Another great example are the sticky headers on the columns, who wants that?  Sticky headers and the shinning example of flare over function, and rarely if ever add any benefit.  Sticky headers should be turn off by default and only turned on by request and on a by column / table basis per user.  I don't want them, never have, and never will.

STOP adding non-optional features!

[Jill Stein]

I feel like this change is counterintuitive. It makes it very difficult to go back to an issue and save the notification for later. Just because a notification is read doesn't mean I that I dont still need to read it. There is no easy way to read a notification and keep it marked as unread after you have opened it unless you right-click and open it in another window. Just because something is read doesn't mean that I don't need the notification anymore. 

Losing the option to delete notifications completely throws my organization method out the window. It doesn't make sense why we wouldn't be allowed to choose what notifications are deleted anymore and limited to the read/unread views. I receive hundreds of tickets in a week which in turn generates hundreds of notifications. Not being able to delete notifications while still having an easy way to keep the ones I have read is going to make it next to impossible to manage my queue. 

This is not user-friendly and we need a way that the user gets to decide how they manage the notification. The old way worked just fine, I feel like this is a major step back. I really hope that JIRA reverts this change, it's terrible. 

[Susanne Ertle]

Thank you @Andrew Murdoch for summing this up so nicely. I don't know that much about Jira, but all these arguments perfectly apply to Confluence.

[Paul]

Yes @Andrew Murdoch, you summarized it very well. They're starting to forget that Jira and Confluence are not for the largest audience which barely find the PgUp key on their keyboard ... Or, if they're going to expand in that area, then should make a product for non-technical people.

[George Rich]

Bad call getting rid of the delete button.  

[Christopher Canti]

My team uses the notification bell to manage their tasks and I think this is going to negatively affect them. In order to read a notification without having it disappear you now need to right click on it. There is also no way of deleting notifications if you want to view the ones you have read.

[Martin]

My whole team are super frustrated that they can't delete notifications now. Like everyone else here, we use it as a to-do list. Just because we've read it, doesn't mean we've actioned it.

Also, what happens if we have a low-priority notification that we haven't actioned and it goes past 30 days? That's now going to be lost and forgotten about. :(

As you can't assign multiple people to an issue this becomes problematic as there could be several people that need to do a task.

Where do you get your feature requests from..? Honestly... :( 

[Andrew Murdoch]

@Martin- They get drunk and throw darts at a board that have ideas there kids some up with, if they hit the idea twice it goes into the software.  I'm not certain that's it, but at least I could almost believe that answer.

[Arthy]

Thank you all for the feedback. We hear you. In fact the change we did with removing the delete option was because some users complained earlier (through product feedback) that they deleted the notifications accidentally with that option. So, as a safety measure, we removed it and created this new workflow (as explained in this comment) which we hope will be useful for managing notifications for majority of the users. 

However, it is unfortunate to see so many unhappy users. Thanks once again for sharing your feedback here. It really helps us understand our users better. 

I do want to reiterate that we are thinking about grouping multiple notifications based on jira issue or confluence page which will help in some cases. Let us know if you think it would be valuable. 

[Andrew Murdoch]

@ArthyThe way to properly address the issue is to add an audit log into the system, so admins can restore things that were deleted.  Ignoring the MAJOR issue that an audit system is missing from Jira, you should have bound the option to remove delete to a toggle switch in the settings, which is user specific.

Since you know removing the option was a train wreck, how long until its restored? 

Why would you group notifications?  Would you group email by the sender or subject?  Hotmail / Outlook tried grouping email, and it was a disaster, so why would you think notifications would work? 

If you want to try and group notifications then listen to what you've being told, and bind that option to a toggle switch in the settings that is user specific.  Always add an option in such away that it can be disabled and is opt in, instead of take it because I said so.

[Martin]

@Arthy - Why didn't you just do what every other project management tool does, and 'Archive' instead of 'Delete'? (Or use a 'Bin/Trash' system like email).

Then you could have an archive area to view old notifications or accidentally deleted notifications.

Alternatively, you could build a unique feature that serves the sole purpose of what people are asking for...

You could build an option into all comments/issues/confluence pages, etc. where you click a button and 'Add to My To-Do'. Then there could be a page to view all the items that you've added to 'My To-Do'. As users read comments or other notifications, if it's something they need to action but don't want to do it right away, you could just add it to my to-do.

Either way, just removing such a prominent thing that affects people's daily workflow as you have was just reckless.