Communication Management¶

Working async, we get many text communications and notifications: client emails, forum posts, Jira updates, mailing list discussions, Mattermost pings, etc. This can result in starting workdays with an tens or even hundreds of items in our inboxes. It's easy to get overwhelmed with the volume of communication.

But we still have that expectation of a 24h response time to direct pings, and we still need to keep on top of relevant discussions.

So how do we make this manageable?

Email filters¶

Gmail supports filters, and these can be really helpful for grouping emails where needed to help prioritise. See Gmail Filters¹ for some example filters that other team members have found helpful.

Managing notifications¶

Several tools have various auto-subscribe settings or verbose notifications on by default. This can be a positive thing in some people's workflows, but it can also result in receiving a high volume of irrelevant notifications.

If you wish to reduce notifications by turning off some of these settings, here are some links and tips to help reduce unwanted notifications.

Jira¶

Jira produces a lot of email notifications, and unfortunately doesn't have fine grained notification controls.

By default, Jira auto-watches tickets you interact with, which can produce a lot of notification noise. You can turn it off with the "Autowatch" setting in the "Preferences" section on your profile page.

To unsubscribe from tickets you no longer want to be notified on all activity, you can click "Stop watching this issue" on the tickets.

For updating a large number of tickets, you can use this Jira search to find tickets you're watching, and the "Tools -> Bulk Change" feature to bulk unwatch if needed.

screenshot of Jira, the "Tools" menu dropdown with the "Bulk Change" menu item

screenshot of Jira, showing step 2 of 4 of the bulk change tool, with "Stop Watching Issues" selected

Mattermost¶

Mattermost can be noisy too; you can configure notifications in "Settings" -> "Notifications". For example, you may wish to restrict notifications to only mentions and direct/group messages.

Mattermost also has multiple notifications channels: email, mobile push, and web/desktop push. Configure however works best for your workflow.

GitHub¶

GitHub previously automatically "watched" new repositories for you, but they turned it off in mid-2025. You can check your list of watched repositories and manually unwatch any you don't want.

See also GitHub Notifications settings where you can customise several aspects of notifications which can help reduce noise. - GitHub also has its own optional web notifications which you may prefer (or not) to email notifications.

GitLab¶

As GitLab doesn't have a page to see all the watched repositories, check the watch settings on specific repos that are sending you too many notifications and turn them off where needed.

From GitLab Notification settings, you can set notification preferences and default preferences for groups.

GitLab doesn't have specifically web notifications, but it does have a kind of web To-Do List; you may prefer this to email notifications.

Open edX Community Wiki (Confluence)¶

Confluence auto-watches pages you interact with by default. You can turn this off in your account Email settings.

There are also several other subscription settings you may wish to review.

OpenCraft forum¶

OpenCraft forum provides Notifications settings and Tracking rules which can be helpful to review.

It's recommended at least turn on "Watching First Post" for the Announcements (public and private) categories, to avoid missing announcements (but won't automatically notify you for every reply to the announcement).

screenshot of the discourse notifications dropdown menu (the bell icon), with "Watching First Post" selected

But apart from that, feel free to turn off notifications, auto watching/tracking posts, etc. to suit your workflow and minimise noise.

Open edX forum¶

Open edX forum similarly provides Notifications settings and Tracking rules.

To keep up to date with announcements and new issues, it is suggested to turn on "Watching First Post" for the DevOps, Announcements, and Development categories.

But in general, some categories will be more relevant to some roles, and feel free to adjust notification rules to minimise noise for yourself.

Reducing distractions¶

Emails aren't the only source of distraction and interruptions during the day. Consider temporally disabling other notifications (such as your phone, or messaging/chat apps) while you are working, especially on deep tasks such as design or development.

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