Work management
Comments, mentions and watching
Who hears about a work item, why, and the one rule that makes muting worth using.
Comments sit on the work item. Typing @ offers the people in your organisation; picking one records the mention against them, so *everything that mentions me* stays a question with an answer.
A mention follows a rename
A mention stores who, not the text of their name. Somebody who changes their name sees the new one in every past mention of them — a rename that leaves a trail of the old name behind is the version of this feature that hurts. A mention of somebody who has left keeps what was typed: they were named, that happened, and blanking it would make the sentence stop parsing.
Watching
Watching is mostly implicit. You reported it, it is assigned to you, you commented on it, somebody named you — any of those puts you on it. Making people subscribe by hand means nobody does, and the tool stops telling anybody anything.
Turning it off is permanent
Once you stop watching an item, nothing implicit puts you back. Commenting again does not re-subscribe you. Without that rule the item you most want to leave is exactly the one you are still being asked about — so you comment, and you are back on it. A product that cannot be turned down is one whose notifications get filtered to a folder nobody opens, which costs it the ones that mattered.
Two things still reach you. Being mentioned, because somebody is asking you a question rather than telling you what happened. And being assigned the work, because that is a notification about you rather than about the item. Neither re-subscribes you.
Muting is also not refusing the work: an item assigned to somebody who muted it is still on their board. Conflating the two is why people stop muting.
What is worth interrupting somebody for
| Change | Sent |
|---|---|
| State, assignee or priority | Yes, to everybody watching. |
| Assigned to you | Yes, to you, and only that message — not both. |
| You were mentioned | Yes, to you, and only that message. |
| Title, description, points, rank, labels, fields | No. |
The list is short on purpose. A board is a live document and most edits are not news; notifying on every field is the fastest way to make the whole channel worthless. One event never produces two messages to the same person — the new assignee hears about it once, through the message that says it is theirs. See Notifications for how any of it is delivered, and which kinds can be switched off.