Why did Confluence send a "recommended" email to all users?
Asked by Chnikki:

I'm hoping this will be an easy question someone can answer. We have been using Confluence for several years now and this is the first time this has happened.

This afternoon, an e-mail went out to all Confluence users with the subject line:

"\[confluence\] Recommended in blah blah blah"

As the admin, I haven't changed any of the settings. I did update our plugins earlier this week.

I have begun creating a new space, so that's what was sent in the e-mail. In a Google search, I did find that I can turn off settings under "Recommended Updates Email".

I'm just curious how this was automatically turned on and if there's any other settings I need to change to disable these notifications from being sent to everyone in the company.


Answers:
author: hsuhailah
body: > I'm just curious how this was automatically turned on

In regards to that, if your Confluence site has [public signup](https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Adding+and+Inviting+Users) enabled, the Recommended Updates notification is disabled by default. If public signup is not enabled, the notification is enabled by default.

comments: author: Chnikki
body: Thank you for this information. That explains it. We do have public signup disabled, so Recommended Updates notification is enabled.

We had alot of confusion after the email went out and the President of our company was a bit concerned. As the admin, I could not remember setting any notifications that would send to everyone. I do think this a great option to have. I'm grateful that we have the option to disable this option, but perhaps it should be disabled by default.


author: Mladen Maravic
body: Whoever in Atlassian made the dicision to make this "feature" enabled by default needs to be fired. I now have 2000 people screaming at me for something I did not know would happen. For a piece of software used a lot in Enterprise environments this sounds like somebody at Atlassian didn't use his/her common sense.

comments: author: JamieA
body: I'm not sure I would go that far, but I have had very irate users complaining to me, and ultimately I have to take the responsibility for not turning it off.

The algorithm is not very clever either... before I turned it off I was getting the same recommendations every week, and it was all for content I had actually written.


author: Mladen Maravi?
body: Ok, I'll admit I have been harsh, but that's only because I just had to unplug my office phone to keep my sanity...


author: Derek Sheeman
body: Yeah this certainly should never be enabled by default. Random "look at this irrelevant page" email to all my users is really unhelpful and unprofessional. It was an unpleasant surprise.


author: Yanick Belart
body: Agree! Enabled by default doesn't make any sense.


author: Stefan Ernst
body: Can this be turned off by default? It scared the \*\*\*\* out of our dev team this morning when users where reporting they were getting emails from the test instance. We have two test servers running and we were completely unaware of this feature when we upgraded. Luckily, not all people in ldap got the email.


author: michelle_bachmann
body: Why did they turn this back on?


author: SarahA
body: Hallo C Parker

Yes, you can disable the email for the entire company. Here's the documentation with all the details about configuring the email:

<https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Configuring+the+Recommended+Updates+Email+Notification>

In short, to turn off the email for the entire site, you can disabe the 'Confluence daily summary email' plugin.

The feature was first shipped in Confluence 4.2. There is also a bug in Confluence 4.2 to 4.2.4, which meant that the email is sent to all users in the company, if your Confluence site is hooked up to LDAP. This bug was fixed in Confluence 4.2.5. Here's the issue: <https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-25213>

I hope this helps.

Cheers, Sarah

comments: author: Chnikki
body: Thank you for the information. We upgraded to Confluence 4.2.6 about a month ago. We do have public signup disabled and LDAP is not hooked up. We have made updates to the site in the past month, but the notifcations went to the appropriate people that signed up for them in a timely manner. This was the first time we had an e-mail go out to all users...most of the users have never logged into Confluence. This is the first new space I created this year, so maybe that triggered the mass notification? I will look into the issue CONF-25213 and log a new issue if it seems the criteria isn't the same.

I just disabled the 'Confluence daily summary email' plugin. So hopefully no more mass emails.

I don't know if you know off the top of your head, but have you heard of any problems with this in Confluence 4.2.11? I was considering upgrading that that version soon.