Atlassian made some changes around the available options for getting a Confluence Cloud change summary email. The "Confluence changes in the last 24 hours" email was gradually removed and the Confluence Daily Digest email was introduced.
The Confluence Daily Digest email is a concise summary of recent changes made in the content you follow. A key advantage is the lighter email traffic, but there are shortcomings, like:
- only content that you watch or contributed to can be included,
- email layout and content are not customizable,
- the schedule is not customizable.
Explore your options in this article, including turning off the Daily Digest email and activating a more customizable summary email. Take the Confluence email notification experience to a more professional level with flexible email notification automations by Better Content Archiving for Confluence.
State of Confluence Daily Digest emails
"Confluence changes in the last 24 hours" used to be a useful summary email many Confluence users signed up for to get an overview of what's going on in Confluence. On top of this, there was also an individual email sent after every page update.
Atlassian aimed to reduce email flow to users. They stopped the Daily Update and individual emails, introducing the Confluence Daily Digest in the summer of 2022.
The Daily Digest email batches page updates into one daily email and brings more options to the email settings. You can still get page creation emails immediately, as well as in your digest email, or opt for no email at all. However, a feature for bulk unwatching pages in Confluence is not on the roadmap.
There are requirements not covered by the new Daily Digest email, but those are still possible with dedicated solutions for Confluence content lifecycle management. If you are searching for a replacement for the "Confluence changes in the last 24 hours" email, you are at the right place.
Understanding the Confluence Daily Digest email
Key information the Daily Digest email contains are:
- pages and blogs updated,
- users who made the updates,
- the number of updates made.
Since this email can only be sent on a daily schedule, the date is always the previous day.
Requirements are varying here: some use cases require the actual changed content to be shared in the email, while others are more cognizant of security and only want page links in the email. In this case, anyone clicking the link will be checked for the right permissions by Confluence.
The daily-only schedule is also too restrictive: some teams rather want a weekly or monthly summary email or have a smarter schedule, like every first Monday of each month.
Atlassian's goal was to reduce email traffic, so the Confluence Daily Digest email replaces real-time notifications in some cases. Page updates are batched together in this email, as well as newly created pages. If you want to be kept notified of newly created pages in real-time, toggle the "New pages" option off so those are not included in the daily email.
The biggest downside of the Confluence Daily Digest emails is that you always have to own or be subscribed to any content that is included in your daily digest email. It is not a good tool to keep an eye on content changes across Confluence spaces based on your own rules of what's important.
As one Atlassian Community user put it:
"With your new option, in order to get an idea of what is trending in the company, I'll need to watch each and every space, and then I'll get flooded by many notifications that I don't need over the day."
The Confluence Daily Digest is not flawless or customizable, so let's discover ways to improve this experience.
Best practices for customizing Confluence Daily Digest emails
The Confluence Daily Digest email can benefit from enhancements in three key areas. Better Content Archiving for Confluence is an established solution used by more than 1300 teams to improve the below aspects of Confluence notification emails.
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Customize the Confluence Daily Digest email template
Better Content Archiving allows you to change the template of the Daily Digest email, so you can add extra content and control the layout. -
Schedule the Confluence Daily Digest email
It's possible to change the schedule of the Confluence Daily Digest email and create several with their own schedules with Better Content Archiving. Send different emails to different teams, for example, one in the morning and one at the end of the day. -
Use smart CQL filters to control what pages to send in the email
Use CQL to define pages or blogs for your Confluence summary email. Specify exclusions, like blogs or pages created by a certain user or based on page status. You can do that all with Better Content Archiving's notification settings.
How to turn off the Confluence Daily Digest email?
To turn off the Confluence Daily Digest email, just uncheck all boxes for the Daily Digest email settings. Once you turned off the summary email and other notifications, try turning on something better!
Turn on a better Confluence Daily Digest email experience
The daily update was a clean and coherent list of all the updates for which the user has visibility. It does not require manually "watching" specific spaces. Now that this "Changes in the last 24 hours" email option does not exist anymore, here is something better and more feature-rich.
The automatic notifications by Better Content Archiving for Confluence present an outstanding alternative to the Confluence Daily Digest emails and help you achieve even more.
Fine-tuning the schedule
What sets this solution apart is the flexibility and customization options, starting with the ability to tailor notification schedules to your team's preferences. Unlike the fixed timing of Confluence Daily Digests, Better Content Archiving empowers you to optimize the frequency of the summary emails. Create a weekly, biweekly, or send at any other period – along with the liberty to choose the best time within a day for email delivery.
A user from the Atlassian Community echoes this sentiment:
"We are wondering if we can control the time when the Daily Updates or Daily Digest is sent. We see the Daily Digest hit our inboxes at about 10 am EST. This is distracting as it is in the middle of our morning work."
Layout customization options
Take control of the layout and presentation of your Confluence Daily Digest with Better Content Archiving's customizable templates. Craft a detailed newsletter-style format or opt for a more condensed version, aligning precisely with the information that holds significance for your team.
Customizable email templates allow you to translate the Confluence Daily Digest email into your language of choice. It helps you support multilingual teams across your entire organization.
Use CQL to define the pages reported
Better Content Archiving excels by providing a summary of all changes in Confluence spaces, not limited to watched, created, or contributed content. Harness the power of the Confluence Query Language (CQL) within Better Content Archiving to fine-tune your notifications.
Filter out specific creators, filter out older blogs, or customize based on unique criteria, ensuring the content you receive aligns precisely with your preferences.
Recipient customization options
Diversify your recipient options with Better Content Archiving. Whether it's the creator, last modifier, page owner(s), a specific group, or even a supervisor, the app caters to a range of choices.
Admins can centrally manage subscriptions for all users, ensuring efficient oversight and control over notification preferences throughout the Confluence instance.
Go beyond a flawed Daily Digest email
With multiple customization options and an automated notifications engine for Confluence Cloud, Better Content Archiving emerges as a versatile and feature-rich alternative to the Confluence Daily Digest emails. Elevate your Confluence experience and unlock the full potential of periodic notification emails with Better Content Archiving.
Get better Confluence Daily Digest emails