Configuring notifications

Notification delivery options

You can receive notifications for activity on GitHub Enterprise Server in the following locations.

• The notifications inbox in the GitHub Enterprise Server web interface
• An email client that uses a verified email address, which can also sync with the notifications inbox on GitHub Enterprise Server

Benefits of the notifications inbox

The notifications inbox on GitHub Enterprise Server includes triaging options designed specifically for your GitHub Enterprise Server notifications flow, including options to:

• Triage multiple notifications at once.
• Mark completed notifications as Done and remove them from your inbox. To view all of your notifications marked as Done, use the is:done query.
• Save a notification to review later. Saved notifications are flagged in your inbox and kept indefinitely. To view all of your saved notifications, use the is:saved query.
• Unsubscribe and remove a notification from your inbox.
• Preview the issue, pull request, or team discussion where the notification originates on GitHub Enterprise Server from within the notifications inbox.
• See one of the latest reasons you're receiving a notification from your inbox with a reasons label.
• Create custom filters to focus on different notifications when you want.
• Group notifications in your inbox by repository or date to get a quick overview with less context switching

Benefits of using an email client for notifications

One benefit of using an email client is that all of your notifications can be kept indefinitely depending on your email client's storage capacity. Your inbox notifications are only kept for 5 months on GitHub unless you've marked them as Saved. Saved notifications are kept indefinitely. For more information about your inbox's retention policy, see "About notifications."

Sending notifications to your email client also allows you to customize your inbox according to your email client's settings, which can include custom or color-coded labels.

Email notifications also allow flexibility with the types of notifications you receive and allow you to choose different email addresses for updates. For example, you can send certain notifications for a repository to a verified personal email address. For more information, about your email customization options, see "Customizing your email notifications."

About participating and watching notifications

When you watch a repository, you're subscribing to updates for activity in that repository. Similarly, when you watch a specific team's discussions, you're subscribing to all conversation updates on that team's page. For more information, see "About team discussions."

To see repositories that you're watching, go to your watching page. For more information, see "Managing subscriptions and notifications on GitHub."

Configuring notifications

You can configure notifications for a repository on the repository page, or on your watching page. You can choose to only receive notifications for releases in a repository, or ignore all notifications for a repository.

For more information, see "Configuring your watch settings for an individual repository" below.

Participating in conversations

Anytime you comment in a conversation or when someone @mentions your username, you are participating in a conversation. By default, you are automatically subscribed to a conversation when you participate in it. You can unsubscribe from a conversation you've participated in manually by clicking Unsubscribe on the issue or pull request or through the Unsubscribe option in the notifications inbox.

For conversations you're watching or participating in, you can choose whether you want to receive notifications by email or through the notifications inbox on GitHub Enterprise Server.

For example:

• If you don't want notifications to be sent to your email, unselect email for participating and watching notifications.
• If you want to receive notifications by email when you've participated in a conversation, then you can select email under "Participating".

If you do not enable watching or participating notifications for web, then your notifications inbox will not have any updates.

Customizing your email notifications

After enabling email notifications, GitHub Enterprise Server will send notifications to you as multipart emails that contain both HTML and plain text copies of the content. Email notification content includes any Markdown, @mentions, emojis, hash-links, and more, that appear in the original content on GitHub Enterprise Server. If you only want to see the text in the email, you can configure your email client to display the plain text copy only.

Choose a default email address where you want to send updates for conversations you're participating in or watching. You can also specify which activity on GitHub Enterprise Server you want to receive updates for using your default email address. For example, choose whether you want updates to your default email from:

• Comments on issues and pull requests.
• Pull request reviews.
• Pull request pushes.
• Your own updates, such as when you open, comment on, or close an issue or pull request.

Depending on the organization that owns the repository, you can also send notifications to different email addresses. Your organization may require the email address to be verified for a specific domain. For more information, see "Choosing where your organization’s email notifications are sent."

You can also send notifications for a specific repository to an email address. For more information, see "About email notifications for pushes to your repository."

You'll only receive notification emails if you've chosen to receive email notifications in your notification settings.

Filtering email notifications

Each email notification that GitHub Enterprise Server sends contains header information. The header information in every email is consistent, so you can use it in your email client to filter or forward all GitHub Enterprise Server notifications, or certain types of GitHub Enterprise Server notifications.

If you believe you're receiving notifications that don't belong to you, examine the X-GitHub-Recipient and X-GitHub-Recipient-Address headers. These headers show who the intended recipient is. Depending on your email setup, you may receive notifications intended for another user.

Email notifications from GitHub Enterprise Server contain the following header information:

Header	Information
From address	This address will always be 'the no-reply email address configured by your site administrator'.
To field	This field connects directly to the thread. If you reply to the email, you'll add a new comment to the conversation.
Cc address	GitHub Enterprise Server will Cc you if you're subscribed to a conversation. The second Cc email address matches the notification reason. The suffix for these notification reasons is based on the no-reply email address configured by your site administrator. The possible notification reasons are: assign: You were assigned to an issue or pull request. author: You created an issue or pull request. comment: You commented on an issue or pull request. manual: There was an update to an issue or pull request you manually subscribed to. mention: You were mentioned on an issue or pull request. push: Someone committed to a pull request you're subscribed to. review_requested: You or a team you're a member of was requested to review a pull request. security_alert: GitHub detected a vulnerability in a repository you receive alerts for. state_change: An issue or pull request you're subscribed to was either closed or opened. subscribed: There was an update in a repository you're watching. team_mention: A team you belong to was mentioned on an issue or pull request. your_activity: You opened, commented on, or closed an issue or pull request.
mailing list field	This field identifies the name of the repository and its owner. The format of this address is always <repository name>.<repository owner>.[hostname].
X-GitHub-Severity field	Email notifications for security alerts that affect one or more repositories include the X-GitHub-Severity header field. You can use the value of the X-GitHub-Severity header field to filter email notifications for security alerts. The possible severity levels are: low moderate high critical For more information, see "About alerts for vulnerable dependencies."

Choosing your notification settings

1. In the upper-right corner of any page, click .
2. In the left sidebar, under the list of repositories, use the "Manage notifications" drop-down to click Notification settings.
3. On the notifications settings page, choose how you receive notifications when:
   • There are updates in repositories or team discussions you're watching or in a conversation you're participating in. For more information, see "About participating and watching notifications."
   • You gain access to a new repository or you've joined a new team. For more information, see "Automatic watching."
   • There are new security alerts in your repository. For more information, see "Security alert notification options."

Automatic watching

By default, anytime you gain access to a new repository, you will automatically begin watching that repository. Anytime you join a new team, you will automatically be subscribed to updates and receive notifications when that team is @mentioned. If you don't want to automatically be subscribed, you can unselect the automatic watching options.

If "Automatically watch repositories" is disabled, then you will not automatically watch your own repositories. You must navigate to your repository page and choose the watch option.

Configuring your watch settings for an individual repository

You can choose whether to watch or unwatch an individual repository. You can also choose to only be notified of new releases, or completely ignore an individual repository.

1. On GitHub Enterprise Server, navigate to the main page of the repository.

2. In the upper-right corner, click the "Watch" drop-down menu to select a watch option.

   

Choosing where your organization’s email notifications are sent

If you belong to an organization, you can choose the email account you want notifications for organization activity sent to. For example, if you belong to an organization for work, you may want your notifications sent to your work email address, rather than your personal address.

You'll only receive notification emails if you've chosen to receive email notifications in your notification settings.

1. In the upper-right corner of any page, click .
2. In the left sidebar, under the list of repositories, use the "Manage notifications" drop-down to click Notification settings.
3. Under "Default notification email", select the email address you'd like notifications sent to.
4. Click Save.

Customizing email routes per organization

If you are a member of more than one organization, you can configure each one to send notifications to any of the email addressed you've added to your GitHub Enterprise Server account.

1. In the upper-right corner of any page, click .
2. In the left sidebar, under the list of repositories, use the "Manage notifications" drop-down to click Notification settings.
3. Under "Custom routing," find your organization's name in the list.
4. Click Edit next to the email address you want to change.
5. Select one of your verified email addresses, then click Save.

Security alert notification options

You can choose the delivery method for notifications about security alerts on repositories that you are watching, as well as the frequency at which the notifications are sent to you.

By default, if your site administrator has configured email for notifications on your instance, you will receive security alerts:

• by email, an email is sent every time a vulnerability is found (Email each time a vulnerability is found option)
• in the user interface, as warnings in your repository's file and code views (UI alerts option)
• on the command line, as warnings that are displayed as callbacks when you push to repositories with vulnerabilities (Command Line option)
• in your inbox, as web notifications (Web option)

You can customize the way you are notified about security alerts. For example, you can receive a weekly digest email summarizing alerts for up to 10 of your repositories using the Email a digest summary of vulnerabilities and Weekly security email digest options.

For more information about the notification delivery methods available to you, and advice on optimizing your notifications for security alerts, see "Configuring notifications for vulnerable dependencies."