User Watches

If a user wants to receive an e-mail when something is edited or when a new article, forum topic or (almost) any other content is added or edited at the site, the user can create a "watch". Watches can also be set for group notifications.

For instance, for the page Using Wiki Pages in this documentation site, a registered user has the option to monitor it (that is, will be able to add a "User Watch" to it):

Contents of this page

1.1. 'My Watches' User Interface

A user can add watches for many Tiki objects (like watching new articles) in the user's MyAccount's "My Watches" page:
Main Application menu > My Tiki > My Watches (tiki-user_watches.php).

The User Watches and preferences page has several tabs (the number depends on the number of activated features at the site):

Report preferences

Click to expand
My Watches

Click to expand
- As indicated in the image above, you can Select an event type from a list, that varies depending on the number of features enabled in the Tiki site, as well as on the permissions of your user to watch changes on those features or objects.
  
  Click to expand
Notification Preferences
These enable indicating if you want to receive an email with a notification of a change that you have made yourself at the site. If you keep these options below unchecked, you will not receive a notification of you own changes.

Click to expand

1.2. Types of watches

The user can click the click the little eye that appears near the top of many pages (often in a dropdown menu or popup bubble). When you click the eye to activate monitoring, it changes to , indicating that you have set a watch.

A watch on a wiki page sends you the new page when it is edited, and any comment that might have been added to the page, and replies to the comment.
A watch on a wiki structure (a structured set of wiki pages) sends you the name of the new page that has been added to the "structure".
A watch on a wiki sub-structure (a structured set of wiki pages below this level of the bigger hierarchical structure) sends you the name of the object that has been added or removed to that level of the "structure" and all its descendants.
A watch on a content category (a category of content of the site) sends you the name of the object that has been added or removed to that category.
A watch on a content category and all its descendants (a category of content of the web site and all the other ones below its hierarchical level) sends you the name of the object that has been added or removed to that "Category" and all its descendants.
A watch on a forum (at the forum level, tiki-view_forum.php, to watch all topics of this forum) tells you about new topics. It does not notify you of replies.
A watch on a forum topic (at thread level, tiki-view_forum_thread.php) sends you any future replies posted to that topic. It does not notify you of new topics or replies to the new topics, unless you have subscribed also to that Forum.
A watch on forum topics and threads (at forum level, tiki-view_forum.php, to watch for all topics and all their replies of this forum) sends you any future new topics and all their corresponding replies posted to them. It does notify you of new topics AND replies to the new topics, unless you manually subscribe also to each one of those topics of the same forum.
A watch on a calendar sends you information on the new events added or edited in that specific calendar. As of Tiki10 (2012) there is no way yet to watch all calendars at once.
- Note about Calendar Watches:
  Please note that if you have more than one calendar created at your site, you have to deselect all calendars except one (from the list of viewable calendars to be displayed) so that you can see the icon to watch that single calendar.
And similarly for all the other Tiki objects that accept "User Watches" . See below the table listing all Tiki objects accepting them.

Note that site admins (belonging to a group which holds the permission to admin that corresponding Tiki object) can also add Group Watches:

a "group watch" on a structure (to force one or several groups of users to watch for changes on the Structure of wiki pages where that wiki page belongs to).
a "group watch" on a category (to force one or several groups of users to watch for changes on the category of objects).
a "group watch" on a forum (to force one or several groups of users to watch for all topics of this forum), or
a "group watch" on a forum topic and threads (to force one or several groups of users to watch for all topics and all their replies of that forum).
a "group watch" on a calendar sends you information of the new events added or edited in that specific calendar. As of Tiki10 (2012) there is no way yet to watch all calendars at once.
- Note about Calendar Watches:
  Please note that if you have more than one calendar created in your site, you have to deselect all calendars except one (from the list of viewable calendars to be displayed) so that you can see the icon to group watch that single Calendar.
And similarly for all the other Tiki objects that accept "Group Watches" . See, below, the table listing all Tiki objects accepting them.

1.3. How to turn off watches

To turn off a user watch, a user can either:

Click on the "stop-monitoring" icon (), which then will change to show that the page isn't being watched
or
Go to your MyAccount's "My watches" page and delete any or all of your watches.

To have yourself removed from receiving Group Watches:

request a site admin to remove you from the group that receives those emails, or
ask the site admin to reconsider that group watch
- Maybe forcing the whole group of users is not a good idea any more once all users know how to enable or disable specific users watches of the objects they are interested in?

Some versions of the Tiki documentation suggest that a watch does not report a change to a wiki page that has been designated as a "minor" change. Please note that this might not be true anymore.

1.4. Which sections can be watched

Feature name and link	Description	Watch item
Articles	Articles can be used for date-specific news and announcements. You can configure articles to automatically publish and expire at specific times or to require that submissions be approved before becoming "live." In addition to categories and tags, articles include their own unique classification system of Topics and Types.	yes (global)
Blogs	Multiple blogs can be created with various author and display configurations, etc.	yes (global and individual)
Calendar	Events calendar with public, private and group channels	yes (individual)
Categories	Global category system. Items of different types (wiki pages, articles, tracker items, etc) can be added to one or many categories. Categories can have permissions.	yes (global and individual)
File Gallery	Storage and sharing via download or display in pages, of images, videos, and other file types . Supports check-in and check-out (lock), versions, etc.	yes (global)
File Gallery	File Galleries enable secure and efficient uploading, storage, downloading and other serving of all types of files including images, videos, podcasts, text and PDF documents and more.	yes (global)
Forums	Forums are online discussions organized by topic (or thread). Tiki forums feature threaded or flat views, file attachments, moderation and queuing, monitoring (subscription) of particular forums or topics, and full usage of wiki syntax.	yes (global and individual)
Maps	Maps can be created and displayed using OpenLayers and OpenStreetMap.	yes (global and individual)
Structure	In Tiki terminology, a structure is a hierarchy for wiki pages. Structures have navigational features such as breadcrumb links and menus; also enabled is printing all pages in the structure and in order.	yes (global and individual)
Trackers	Facts and figures storage and retrieval. A forms and database generator, with reporting. Can be used for a bug tracker, item database, issue tracker, etc	yes (global and individual)
Wiki	Collaboratively authored documents with history of changes. Tiki's wiki has all the features you could want from a first-rate wiki. Ex.: attach files, comments, history, images, warn on edit, page locking, powerful wiki syntax, alternative WYSIWYG editor, etc.	yes (global and individual)

A category can be watched, and thus you'll receive an email when items are added to or removed from the category but also when items in the category are modified. This can be useful for Tiki as a Document Workflow or in Project Management.

Watches can be assigned to groups, so that all members of a group receive watch notifications.

1.5. How to enable/disable this feature

You must go to Admin -> Features -> User (tab), and check/uncheck User Watches.