Using Instant notification emails

Subject line

Depending on options implemented by your organization, you may see a subject line in a notification email that appears confusing after the first sentence. This is because the message to which the notification pertains is being previewed in the subject line, to help the user get an idea of what the message may be about. For example, the subject line of your notification email may look like this:

Joe Smith commented on an activity by Dan Baker.

… or it may look like this:

Joe Smith commented on an activity by Dan Baker. --> @tomr @bmalone Hey guys, do you have any documenta

In the latter case, things have been configured so that the first 50 characters of the original message are automatically included at the end of the subject line of the notification email. The “ --> ” here is just an example of text that the administrator who set up this option might have added in as a visual separator.

Taking actions on the event

You can take actions on the event in your notification email by clicking links that are contained within the email, displayed just under the event text, or by replying to the email.

You can like the event, comment on or answer it, or mark it for follow-up directly from the notification email by clicking the corresponding link that is displayed under the event. Note that unlike in the web interface, you cannot like comments from the digest email. You also get no indication if you have already marked the item for follow-up.

When you click Like or Follow-up, a new email is started for you. Send the email without making any modifications, in order to complete the like or follow-up action.

Clicking Comment or Answer also starts a new email for you. Type your comment or answer in the body of the email without modifying the To line or the Subject line. Make sure your reply is inserted above the horizontal line that appears in the body.

This line is used to help determine where your message ends, so that any signature you add to your emails is not included in the response. Send the email to submit the comment/answer.

To access actions not available from the digest email, such as @ target autocompletion, hashtag autocompletion, or liking comments, lick the View link to open the item in a web page.

An alternative way to comment or answer on the event is to create a reply to the email using your email program’s “Reply” option. Type your comment at the top of the reply email, without deleting anything that prepopulated in the email body or the subject line, and send to submit the comment or answer. This option is currently the only means of taking action on the event from the notification email for BlackBerry users.

Using the Outlook Conversation View to manage long conversations

If you are set up to get notifications for a particular conversation, and that conversation gets a lot of responses, it can be time consuming to manage all the different notification emails you get for that conversation.

Your experience of the conversation may also feel disjointed as your attention is pulled into and out of it, because you are reading other emails that arrived in between the notifications for the conversation.

If you have Outlook 2010 or higher, you can alleviate these difficulties by using the Conversation View, which can be activated by checking Show as Conversations on Outlook’s View tab:

Check Show as Conversations chekbox

Beginning with Skyvera Social 3.0, notifications about the same activity stream item will all be grouped together when Conversation View is in use.

In the example below, several people have reacted to a question in the activity stream with a combination of answers and likes. All of the notification emails are grouped together in Outlook.

Ending notifications for a conversation

If you continue getting notifications for an activity stream item that no longer holds value for you, you can stop notifications from being sent to you for that item by clicking the Mute link at the bottom of any of the notification emails you have received for it.

Click Mute

You can also mute an item via the web interface by opening the dropdown menu using the “chevron” control in the upper right corner of the item’s display in the stream, and selecting Mute from this menu.

Muting an item from web interface

It can take up to a minute for the server to process your mute request.

After you mute the conversation, someone may post a response to it in which you are explicitly targeted. Because in this case it is likely that you are being asked to provide a response, it is assumed that you want to be notified of this, and your notifications will resume for that conversation. You have to mute the conversation once again to prevent notifications for responses that are made after that.