[pmwiki-users] email notification of page changes (watchlists)

[Marc Cooper]

Patrick R. Michaud said...
> On pmwiki.org I now have a preliminary implementation of edit
> notifications via email.  These allow the creation of custom
> "watch lists", with notification emails sent in response to
> modifications of pages of interest (i.e., "watchlists").
> 
> This feature is currently enabled on pmwiki.org, for those who would
> like to experiment with the feature or start watching pmwiki pages.
> 
> Watch lists are configured via the Site.NotifyList page.
> (For those who want to experiment with this on pmwiki.org, the
> password for Site.NotifyList is "quick".) The most basic entry 
> in the NotifyList page sends email for any page that changes 
> on the site:
> 
>     notify=alice at example.com
> 
> This causes alice at example.com to start receiving email messages
> with lists of pages that have been modified.  Of course, Alice
> probably doesn't want to receive a separate message for every 
> edit that takes place, so multiple edits are batched together 
> according to a 'squelch' setting (similar to the way MailPosts
> works now).  The squelch setting indicates the minimum
> number of seconds that must elapse after each notify message 
> before another is sent.   PmWiki's default squelch is 
> 10800 seconds (3 hours), so after Alice receives a 
> notification email, any edits that take place during the 
> next three hours will be batched together and then sent
> as a single message.
> 
> Alice can change the squelch parameter for her messages.  To
> receive at most one notify message per day, Alice would use
> 
>     notify=alice at example.com squelch=86400
> 
> What if we have someone who wants to watch only a certain set of
> pages?  There are several ways to do this.  First, we can specify
> a trail with pages to be watched:
> 
>     notify=bob at example.com trail=Profiles.Bob
> 
> This sends Bob email notifications only for pages listed in the
> trail at Profiles.Bob.  This makes it easy for Bob to adjust the
> pages he's interested in by simply editing the Profiles.Bob page.
> 
> This also means a wiki administrator can control who is allowed
> to receive notifications (by restricting editing of the Site.NotifyList
> page), while still allowing non-administrators to maintain custom
> watch list trails.
> 
> Any trail will work, thus to keep track of changes to the PmWiki
> documentation:
> 
>     notify=charles at example.com trail=PmWiki.DocumentationIndex
> 
> One can also use the "group=", "name=", and "link=" options to
> specify watch lists by group (wildcarded), name (wildcarded), or
> target link:
> 
>     ##   watch pages in Cookbook, PmWiki, and PITS:
>     notify=dave at example.com group=Cookbook,PmWiki,PITS
> 
>     ##   watch changes to pages in the Skins category
>     notify=edward at example.com link=Category.Skins
> 
> Multiple email addresses may be specified in the notify line...
> 
>     ##   tell admin and myboss about all changes
>     notify=admin at example.com,myboss at company.com
> 
> ...and its okay for an email address to appear on multiple lines.
> 
>     ##   tell frank at example.com about Cookbook and Profiles.Frank changes
>     notify=frank at example.com group=Cookbook
>     notify=frank at example.com name=Profiles.Frank
> 
> (If a 'squelch' option appears multiple times for a given
> email address, the last one is used.)
> 
> There are probably a few details I've left out, but this should be
> enough to get things started.  I have a bit more testing to do, but
> I'm expecting this to be included in the 2.1.7 release.  
> 
> Also note that this is just the first step of the overall plan I wrote 
> in http://www.pmichaud.com/pipermail/pmwiki-users/2006-March/023990.html .
> At some point in the future we can add features to obfuscate email 
> addresses in the Site.NotifyList page, forms for adding and verifying
> email addresses to that page, links to add pages to watchlists, etc.
> 
> Comments, questions, suggestions welcomed as always.

(I've reposted the whole of Pm's original post, since this thread is 
currently inactive.)

The new notify function is a terrific start. Now, of course, comes the 
wish-list. First, a few questions:

* Is it possible to 'watch' a Group via the user's profile page? If so, 
what is the syntax.

I know that this can be done via Site.NotifyList, but, in my case, this 
page will not be editable by users; it will simply have an entry for 
each user of the form:

   notify=marc at blah.com trail=Profiles.Marc

* Is it possible to adjust a user's squelch via their profile page?

* Is there a plan for a 'watch this page' action? Or is this better done 
through a recipe? 

-- 
Best,
Marc