This article...
- Explains how Participation Emails notify users about engagement with their own content.
- Details how users can enable or disable Participation Emails in their Profile > Email Preferences.
- Discusses the difference between Participation Emails and Real-Time or Digest notifications.
- Lists the available unsubscribe options, including unsubscribing from specific threads or all participation emails.
Participation Emails are a type of notification designed to keep you informed about engagement with your own contributions and the content you choose to follow. This feature is managed on the Email Preferences page of your profile.
Example triggers include:
- Someone replies to your discussion thread or answers a question you posted
- Someone comments on your blog article, library upload, or ideation submission
- Someone @mentions you
- Someone sends you a Contact request
- Someone engages with content you've followed
TIP: Refer to Participation Emails triggers, below, for information on which community activities trigger Participation emails.
Participation Emails notes
- The setting is not managed per activity or per community by Admins. It is managed by individual users and, when enabled, it applies to all posting activities in all communities that the user belongs to.
- When the setting is enabled, the user will be sent a message within a few minutes of a community member engaging with content that the user has posted.
- While this is similar to the Discussion Email > Real-Time option that can be set for each community that a user joins, it differs in that it is not per community and is not unique to Discussion threads.
- If a user is being sent Real-Time Discussion emails, these participation emails will not be sent to them to prevent duplicate notifications in their inbox.
- Participation emails are sent only to i) users who have Daily Digest and ii) users who have opted out of receiving email messages.
- Participation emails are not sent to users who have either a Real-Time or a Plain Text subscription.
- These participation emails are distinct from your community subscription emails. For example, if you're subscribed to a community with Daily Digest emails but post a thread to that community, you'll receive notifications about any replies but also receive your Daily Digest email at the end of the day to browse other content in the community.
Manage the Participation Emails feature
The feature is enabled (Yes) by default.
To manage it:
- Navigate to your user Profile.
- Click My Account > Email Preferences.
- Scroll down to the Participation Emails section.
- Click the Yes/No toggle to change the setting.
IMPORTANT: The feature controls only whether Participation Email notifications get sent to the email address that you've specified on the Email Preferences page of your community profile. The notification messages are always sent to your profile inbox, regardless of whether this setting is enabled or not.
Participation Emails triggers
If you have enabled Participation Emails, you'll be notified via email within a few minutes of when someone:
- replies to one of your Discussion posts
- comments on one of your Blog articles, Library uploads, or Ideation submissions.
How to receive these emails
By default, you'll automatically be sent participation emails for all content that you're following.
NOTE: The Follow toggle is Admin-configurable and, on your site, might have a different label than what's shown below; however, its functionality is the same.
If you disable Participation Emails on your profile, the Follow toggle no longer displays on content pages.
Note that the system defaults you to automatically follow all content that you contribute, so you'll automatically be sent participation emails when other users engage with your content as detailed in this article.
TIP: You can unfollow your own content; just navigate to the content and click the Follow toggle.
Manually follow content
In addition to being sent participation emails for engagement with content that you have contributed, you can manually follow Discussion posts, Blog articles, Library Entries, and Ideation submissions that others have contributed. By following other users' content, participation emails will be sent to you when your peers engage with it.
See Follow Content to learn more about how to manually follow content and view this content from your profile.
Unsubscribe options
There are several ways to unsubscribe from participation emails.
- Click Unsubscribe in a participation email to unsubscribe from the associated thread.
- Click Unsubscribe from all participation emails in any participation email to unsubscribe from all participation emails.
- Click email preferences to access your profile.
Keep in mind...
Even if Participation Emails is set to No, you will continue to be sent—to your community account Inbox only—the following types of participation email messages. These messages will not, however, be sent to your alternative, external email account.
- Reply to sender
- @mentions
- Contact request
- Ideation, Library, and Blog participation emails