Server: Sending activity emails regardless of personal settings

[Charburner]

Steps to reproduce

1. Disable all mail notifications in a users personal activity settings
2. Share a new folder with that user
3. Notice that mentioned user will get an mail notification about this new share _immediately_ - even though he clearly has no activity mail setting enabled

Expected behaviour

If a user disables the activity mail feature in his personal settings, the system should not sent any mail regarding activities.

Actual behaviour

Users will get mails about recent activities even though they unmarked all mail options.

Server configuration

Operating system: CentOS 7

Web server: Apache 2.4

Database: MariaDB

PHP version: 7.1.8

Nextcloud version: 13.0.4

Signing status:

Signing status

No errors have been found.

List of activated apps:

App list

Enabled:

• activity: 2.6.1
• admin_audit: 1.3.0
• dav: 1.4.7
• federatedfilesharing: 1.3.1
• files: 1.8.0
• files_antivirus: 1.2.0
• files_automatedtagging: 1.3.0
• files_downloadactivity: 1.2.0
• files_pdfviewer: 1.2.1
• files_retention: 1.2.0
• files_sharing: 1.5.0
• impersonate: 1.0.4
• logreader: 2.0.0
• lookup_server_connector: 1.1.0
• oauth2: 1.1.1
• password_policy: 1.3.0
• provisioning_api: 1.3.0
• serverinfo: 1.3.0
• systemtags: 1.3.0
• theming: 1.4.5
• twofactor_backupcodes: 1.2.3
• workflowengine: 1.3.0

[nextcloud-bot]

GitMate.io thinks possibly related issues are https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/9754 (Secondary email in personal infos), https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/5658 (share by email - password email not sent - solved), https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/2222 (Duplicate email field in personal settings), https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/6578 (in "Personal" email visible by default), and https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/7310 (Sending pgp encrypted Emails).

[MorrisJobke]

Notice that mentioned user will get an mail notification about this new share immediately - even though he clearly has no activity mail setting enabled

The sharing has nothing to do with the activity settings. The email you receive there is the normal sharing email. This one can not be disabled. The settings you mentioned only affects the emails you get additionally for given activities.

It might make sense to disable the "somebody has shared a file" with you setting, but as of now it is there as a feature and often demanded. Also otherwise you wouldn't know that there happened something.

I hope that explains the confusion here.

[Charburner]

Thanks for clarifying.

Am I wrong or is this behaviour "new" in terms of it has been added somewhere in Release 12 or 13?

I am currently upgrading from 11.0.2 and the only issue I have with this behaviour is that new users I just created will get unexpected notification mails about new shares before I even had the chance to inform them about our new cloud system or their freshly created account.

Maybe I should disable those new users before sharing folders or I could just add the mail address as a last step of user configuration to circumvent premature notification mails.

[MorrisJobke]

I am currently upgrading from 11.0.2 and the only issue I have with this behaviour is that new users I just created will get unexpected notification mails about new shares before I even had the chance to inform them about our new cloud system or their freshly created account.

Maybe I should disable those new users before sharing folders or I could just add the mail address as a last step of user configuration to circumvent premature notification mails.

I don't know since when, but I guess we added the "Somebody shared something with you" in 12 or 13 and it's the intended behavior. Also there is no way to disable it AFAIK. Sharing to disabled users should be not possible as well.

[tomtomas99911]

I am using Nextcloud 14 and this function which send e-amil notification with every shared file is really annoying. Why is there an "Activity" dialog when I cannot disable e-mail notification for shared files?

Thank you!

[MorrisJobke]

@tomtomas99911 For Nextcloud 17 we plan to integrate a way to properly decide which emails you want to receive.

[sinichi19]

Its already Integrate? for NC17

Requesting to have an option to disabled the email notification for sharing the file.

Instead enable the notification in web for new shared file..

Thank You