Email notifications still going out even when WATCHERs removed
Asked by Chris P.:

Little bit of a problem here as I am trying to update 100s of pages via the Confluence Cloud REST API.

This was never a problem before, until I added in deleting and / or adding attachments to pages.

<https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/confluence/rest/api-group-content---attachments/#api-api-content-id-child-attachment-put>

Now that we do batch updates that include attachments, all of our "SPACE" watchers as well as our individual "Page" watchers get an email that something has been updated.

I thought I have found the solution by removing watchers (for both SPACE and PAGE), making the edits, and then adding them back in.

<https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/Prevent-notifications-when-using-REST-API/qaq-p/948058>

However, even removing both sets of watchers (again via the API):

[Remove content watcher](https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/confluence/rest/api-group-content-watches/#api-api-user-watch-content-contentid-delete)

[Remove space watch](https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/confluence/rest/api-group-content-watches/#api-api-user-watch-space-spacekey-delete)

... users are STILL getting an email notification :(

I tried playing with the timing, thinking that Atlassian may have a update window, where "watcher" flags only get updated every " X " about of minutes, but that did not help either.

I tried removing watchers, and waiting 1, 3, 5, even 10 minutes before making edits, but notifications still came through.

*For example:*

* 20:01 \> Disabled Watchers
* 20:06 \> Edit pages
* 20:11 \> Re-enabled watchers
* 20:25 \> Received email in user imbox


Answers:
author: Brant Schroeder
body: [@Chris P_](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1935767)

You are only able to disable watchers at the page level. Any space watchers would still remain, hence the notifications still going out. The only other thing I can think to do would be to try what was suggested here: <https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-38804> by adjusting the payload to be a minor edit. The only issue is that if deleting or adding an attachment fires off something else that would kick off the notification.

comments: author: Chris P.
body: Hello Brant, thanks for reply.

[Remove Space watchers](https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/confluence/rest/api-group-content-watches/#api-api-user-watch-space-spacekey-delete)

I tried this API call, and verified that it works quite well.

I can run this as stand-alone, and all space watchers get removed.

However, once page edits are complete, and even after a 600 second timeout for example, once Space watchers re-enabled ([Add Space Watchers](https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/confluence/rest/api-group-content-watches/#api-api-user-watch-space-spacekey-post) ), an email is still received by Watchers (in some cases 10+ minutes after the fact)


author: Brant Schroeder
body: [@Chris P_](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1935767) If you do it for just a single page, remove watchers and then make the change and then wait 15 mins before putting the watchers back on do they still get the notification?


author: Chris P.
body: I haven't waited as long as 15 minutes in past, but let me try that in about an hour and I'll report back.

Thanks


author: Brant Schroeder
body: [@Chris P_](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1935767) At this point I am just throwing out some ideas. I am wondering if the batch processing of removing and adding takes place quickly while the actual page update gets queued and then emails still end up going out. In the past, if you did 20 updates did all the updates generate an email?


author: Chris P.
body: Thanks Brank \> yes that is a good point.

If there were 20 updates = yes = it generates 20 emails.

Scenario 1)

1 edit to to page content = 1 email

Scenario 2)

2 attachments deleted from page + 3 attachments added to page = 5 emails


author: Brant Schroeder
body: Chris,

If you just have one page, maybe a test page, where you take the watchers off perform one update, and then leave the watchers off are they still getting an email?


Tags: api

cloud

confluence-cloud

email

notification

rest

rest-api

watcher