Notifications Application
 | Display notifications about events happening in the wiki. |
| Type | XAR |
| Category | Application |
| Developed by | |
| Active Installs | 2534 |
| Rating | |
| License | GNU Lesser General Public License 2.1 |
| Bundled With | XWiki Enterprise |
Table of contents
Description
This application adds a new "notifications" menu in the top bar, represented by a bell:
, you can find in this menu the notifications about some events happening on the wiki (a page has been modified, a new blog post has been posted, etc...).
The number of notifications is displayed on the top menu, just above the bell:
, if you have more than 20 unread notifications, you will not see the real count but this instead:
When you open the menu, you can see the list of notifications:
If you click on the little button with the "check" icon, you mark the notification as "read". In the future, you will be able to select either you want to see only unread notifications or all of them.
When the notification is read, the button disappear and the background color changes:
The "Clear All" link will remove all notifications that were sent till now.
When no notification is available, you will see the following:
Group of notifications with details
Similar notifications are grouped together in order to avoid a batch of identical content. Only one notification is displayed, and it is possible to see the details of all activities in the "Details" section (if any). Example:
Get a notification RSS feed
, you can get a RSS feed of the notifications occurring in your wiki. This feed can be accessed either through your notifications center settings or directly through a link in your notification tray.
Settings
On the notifications menu, you also have a link to go to the "settings" of the notifications.
By default, users don't get any notification. You need to select which "types" of notifications you want to receive. When a page is created? When a blog post is published?
You can enable or disable all notification types that belong to a particular application by clicking on the bells associated to this application. If some types are enabled and other are disabled inside an application, the switch looks like the next screenshot, meaning that the application's notifications are partially enabled:
Note that when you turn on notifications you see all past notifications till now. If you wish to only see future notifications you can click on "Clear All".
Filters
There is a "Filter" box on the bottom of the settings we have yet described.
These filters allow you to restrict on witch locations you want to receive notifications, for each event type.
To add a new filter, click on the "add a filter" button :
You will see a picker that will let you chose either a page or a wiki and a selector to choose if the filter should be inclusive or exclusive. When you select a page, the filter will also be applied on its nested pages, unless it is a terminal page.
, you can also define exclusive filters. You can then exclude some pages from your notifications.
Note that exclusive filters take precedence over inclusive filters.
, default notifications filters can be added to a wiki. When a default notification filter is registered, it appears as enabled in the notification center of every user.
Each user can then access the "Advanced filtering options" panel in order to enable or disable those notification filters.
Watched Entities
You can also decide to watch some entities. Either a location (a page, a page with its children or a wiki) or a user (planned for 9.9).
Enabling the feature
By default, the feature is disabled, because it conflicts with the Watchlist Application that will be removed from XWiki soon.
To enable it, you need to edit the xwiki.properties file:
#-# Indicate if the "watched entities" feature is enabled on the platform.
#-# This feature mimics what the "Watchlist Application" does so it may not be a good idea to have both on the platform.
#-#
#-# The default is :
# notifications.watchedEntities.enabled = false
Using it
To watch a location, all you need is to go to that place, and then click on the "alert" menu (represented by a bell).
Here you can decide to watch either this page, this page and its children, or the entire wiki.
On the notifications settings (in your user profile), you will see the watched entities in the filters box:
Since 9.9, you won't be able to click on the buttons if you don't have enabled some event type first:
Filter a user
If you go to the profile of an user, using the User Index for example, you can see if you are watching a user or no. By default, you receive notifications from all users (so you are following all of them), but you can decide to hide some people.
You can find your settings in your "notification" section of your own user profile:
Coexistence with the Watchlist Application
If the Watchlist Application is installed, you will have two rows of buttons instead of one. The first row concerns the Watchlist, and the second, the notifications.
You will also receive 2 emails: one from the Watchlist, and one from the Notifications Application. That is why we recommend to uninstall the Watchlist when you use the "Watched Entities" feature.
Emails
You can also select some types of notifications that you will receive by email. You can have different choices enabled by email and in the menu. Then, on the very bottom of the page, you can select the interval between 2 emails. For example, if you choose "Daily" (default), you will receive one email every day with the recap of the events that have happened during the day. Of course, if there were no activity in this period of time, no email is sent.
, live notifications emails can be sent to a user. The wiki administrator can also define a "grace time" for live email notifications ; when an event that triggers a notification is sent, the platform will wait for the duration of this grace time before sending a notification email. If during this interval, a new event of the same kind is sent, the two events will be grouped in the same email. You can get more informations on how to configure this feature here.
Of course, it works only if the user has properly filled her e-mail address.
You can edit the frequency of your email notifications by using the selector just at the bottom of the notification preferences pane in your profile page :
, the changes are displayed in the email content:
Enable and disable the extension
The extension status can be toggled by editing the configuration variable "notifications.enabled" in xwiki.properties and restarting the server.
# Notifications
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#-# [Since 9.4RC1]
#-# Indicates if the notification module should be enabled on the platform.
#-#
#-# The default is :
# notifications.enabled = true
Enable and disable the email feature
, the administrator can disable the "email" notifications by editing the configuration variable "notifications.emails.enabled" in xwiki.properties and restarting the server.
#-# Indicates if the notifications module can send emails.
#-#
#-# The default is :
# notifications.emails.enabled = true
Customize live email notifications grace time
, the wiki users can receive live email notifications when an event is triggered in the wiki.
In order to reduce the load on the server and on your MTA, you can define a live notification grace time in xwiki.properties with the variable notifications.emails.live.graceTime. The server should be restarted for the changes to take effect.
#-# Indicate the grace time used when sending live email notifications.
#-# When an event is triggered in the wiki (for example, a document update), the platform will wait X minutes
#-# before sending live notifications emails. During this time, if events of the same kind are recieved, they will
#-# be grouped in the same email.
#-#
#-# The grace time define the period (in minutes) for which the platform should wait before sending a notification
#-# mail after an event.
#-#
#-# The default is :
# notifications.emails.live.graceTime = 10
Administrators
Customizing the notification email template
The template used for email notifications is customizable. It is stored in an XWiki.Mail object inside the page XWiki.Notifications.MailTemplate.
Developers
Send notifications
See Tutorial: How to send notifications.
Override default notification templates in wiki pages
, a wiki administrator can change the way notifications are displayed in the notification tray using the NotificationDisplayerClass XObject. You can get more informations about this feature in the Notifications API documentation.
Prerequisites & Installation Instructions
We recommend using the Extension Manager to install this extension (Make sure that the text "Installable with the Extension Manager" is displayed at the top right location on this page to know if this extension can be installed with the Extension Manager). Note that installing Extensions when being offline is currently not supported and you'd need to use some complex manual method.
You can also use the following manual method, which is useful if this extension cannot be installed with the Extension Manager or if you're using an old version of XWiki that doesn't have the Extension Manager:
- Log in the wiki with a user having Administration rights
- Go to the Administration page and select the Import category
- Follow the on-screen instructions to upload the downloaded XAR
- Click on the uploaded XAR and follow the instructions
- You'll also need to install all dependent Extensions that are not already installed in your wiki
Dependencies
Dependencies for this extension (org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-notifications-ui 9.9):
- org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-notifications-script 9.9
- org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-notifications-filters-default 9.9
- org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-notifications-notifiers-default 9.9
- org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-notifications-preferences-default 9.9
- org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-notifications-filters-watch 9.9
- org.webjars:bootstrap-switch 3.3.2
- org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-rendering-macro-velocity 9.9
- org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-icon-script 9.9
- org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-user-profile-ui 9.9
- org.xwiki.rendering:xwiki-rendering-macro-html 9.9
