QRG - Watching Spaces, Forums, and Pages

All users are invited to improve upon this Quick Reference Guide or create new ones.

This page provides full explanation of the various methods for setting up email notifications of new and changed content in the wiki, a process called "watching" the wiki. This is critical for following discussion forums and learning of new resource information posted on the wiki.

For those wishing to scan, please consider the entries on Subscribe to daily updates and the Discussion Forum watch.

Avoid junk mail filter problems for wiki email. Make sure your corporate and personal junk mail filters are set to receive all email from piugwikimaster@gmail.com, the email address of record for the PIUG wiki.

Overview of Watch Functions

• "Watches" alert users by email with the content of every new or edited page, topic, or reply, or addition of a new attachment. There are watches for the entire space, for page families (target page and all its descendant pages), and for individual pages.

• Watched page or page families generate email notifications whenever new pages are added within page families, existing pages are edited, or watched pages have attachments added. New comments or replies also generate email notifications for watched pages or page families. Editing comments does not generate email notifications. Sample email notifications are provided in child wiki page available through these links: new forum topic, edited resource page, and page with new attachments. Note the active links to "View Online", "View Changes", "Add Comment", and "View Attachments" which point to the wiki pages for viewing or action.

• Check the "Minor change?" box when editing any wiki page to avoid having an email notification sent to all page watchers. Because at this time there is not "Minor Change?" box for editing comments or uploading attachments, an email notification will always be sent whenever one adds or edits comments or uploads attachments. To minimize email notifications, be sure to upload attachments in bulk, i.e. up to six attachments at a time.

Use the Settings menu item " Manage My Email Notifications" and its subitems to make changes to your settings.

• " Watch this Space" will set the personal variable so that the user is alerted by email of all changes within the target space. This is the most comprehensive means of monitoring your committee, task force or team space.

• " View my Space and Page Watches" links to a page summarizing all the spaces and individual pages that the user is watching. While watches can be deleted from this summary page, new watches must be added directly from the individual space or page.

• " Page Family (Forum) Watches" links to a page summarizing all root pages whose descendant pages are being watched. This is critical for watching Forums. The user can re-add all the notifications for descendants of a root page that may have been manually turned off. Alternatively, the user may remove a page as the root page of the watch hierarchy with or without also removing notifications from descendant pages that may currently be in place.

• " Subscribe to Daily Updates" to receive an email message that contains a summary of all changes made in the past 24 hours to spaces the user can see

• " Notify me on my own Postings" to receive an email message notifying you of your own new pages or new or edited content.

Summary of Watch levels

• Space: watch a whole space with the menu item " Watch this space" under your name menu item. Even if you are watching a whole space, you may unwatch individual pages by clicking on the unwatch envelop icon at the upper-right corner of pages.

• Discussion Forum: The "Watch This Forum" menu item will appear in the top menubar for every page in a forum as long as you are not watching the whole space. Similarly, the "Page Family Watch" icon will appear on every page in a space not being watched to control notification of that page and all children pages. This function is particularly important for but not limited to watching forums. Clicking on The "Watch This Forum" menu item or the "Page Family Watch" icon will have email notifications sent each time all new topics, pages, replies, comments, or edits to the forum or descendants of the subject page from that time on. If any new pages are added to the page hierarchy in the future, you will also be added as a watcher to those new pages and their replies and edits. You can manually unwatch any individual pages in the hierarchy if you no longer want to receive notifications for an individual page or topic. This will also stop you being automatically added as a watcher to any new child pages that are added to the specific page have chose not to watch any longer. Use the "Manage Page Family Watches" icon to add back all pages that you manually removed from the Watch List or remove the Page Family Watch altogether.

• Page: The watch icon in the upper-right corner will toggle the watch function for each individual page. Even if you are watching a whole space or forum, you can use the page Unwatch icon to remove the particular page from watches within the space or forum.

• User Control: You have considerable control over what email notifications you receive. If you "watch" a whole space, you will get all email notifications for added or changed content except when page editors remember to check the "Minor change?" box. On the other hand, if you get a notification on a page you don't care about, you may go to that page and "unwatch" it specifically so you will no longer get further email notifications. This will work on personal spaces, on individual forum postings or other individual pages, or for whole forums.