Some work matters to you without being assigned to you. Watchers let anybody follow a work item and get told when it moves, when a field changes, when it is reassigned, when somebody comments, when a file is attached, when a checklist is updated, or when it closes. People are enrolled automatically when they create, are assigned, are mentioned, or comment, they can add each other, and anyone can mute an item from the email itself.
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Key Features
Watch Anything
Follow a work item you do not own and hear about it when it changes. Unwatch in the same click when it stops being your concern.
Automatic Enrolment
People are added as watchers when they create an item, are assigned it, are mentioned on it, or comment on it. Each of those four rules can be switched off.
Seven Event Types
Status change, field update, assignment, comment, attachment, checklist update, and close. Each is switched on or off for the whole company.
Add and Remove Others
Put a colleague on an item they need to know about, and take them off again. The picker offers project members, or everyone in the company if you allow watching outside a project.
Mute Without Unwatching
Stay on the watcher list and stop the email. Muting is per item and per person, so you keep the item in your list without the noise.
One Click Mute From Email
The email carries a signed link that mutes exactly that item for exactly that person. It needs no login and it cannot be replayed against anything else.
Immediate or Digest
Immediate events go out as they happen. Everything else can be buffered into a daily digest, a weekly digest, or both, so people get one summary rather than a stream.
Digest Time and Day
Set the hour for the daily digest, the day and hour for the weekly one, and the timezone they are calculated in, so a digest arrives when people are actually reading.
Per Work Item Type
Turn watchers on for epics, features, stories, and tasks independently, or for individual types, so you do not get followed notifications on layers your organisation does not use.
In App and Email
Notifications are written into the in app feed as well as sent by email, so somebody who has muted their inbox still sees what changed.
Editable Email Templates
Watcher emails have their own per company templates with an editable subject and body, and each one can be switched off on its own.
Notify Self, Optionally
Decide whether the person who made the change hears about their own change. Off by default, on when a team wants the confirmation.
Access Aware
When somebody loses access to a project, their watcher rows and pending digest entries for that project are removed, so a notification cannot outlive the permission behind it.
Personal Watching Page
One page lists every item you watch across every project, which is the quickest honest answer to what am I actually on the hook for.
Queued Delivery
Emails are fanned out through the queue worker rather than in the request, so a busy item with many watchers does not slow down the person who made the change.
Bounded Buffer
The digest buffer is pruned by age rather than emptied on send, so daily and weekly digests can share one buffer without either one stealing the other's rows.
About this plugin
Why Task Watchers for Orangescrum?
Assignment answers who is doing the work. It does not answer who needs to know. The account manager, the tester, the person whose feature depends on it, and the manager who has to report on it all care about an item nobody would think to assign to them. Watchers give those people a way to follow work without pretending to own it.
Enrolled without being asked
People are added automatically when they create an item, are assigned it, are mentioned on it, or comment on it, and each of those four rules can be switched off if it is too eager for your organisation. Anyone can also add a colleague to an item, and remove them again. The picker offers project members, or everybody in the company when you allow watching outside a project.
Told about what you care about
Seven event types are covered: status change, field update, assignment, comment, attachment, checklist update, and close. Each one is switched on or off for the company, so you can start with comments and status only and add the rest once people trust the volume. Notifications go to the in app feed as well as by email.
One summary instead of a stream
Events can be buffered into a daily digest, a weekly digest, or both, and you set the hour, the weekday, and the timezone they are calculated in. The buffer is pruned by age rather than emptied when a digest sends, so daily and weekly can share one buffer without either one taking the other's rows. Immediate delivery is still available for the events that genuinely cannot wait.
Easy to stop
The quickest way to make people ignore notifications is to make them hard to turn off. A watcher can mute an item and stay on the list, and every email carries a signed link that mutes exactly that item for exactly that person with no login. The link encodes the company, the item, and the person and is verified, so it cannot be reused against anything else.
Notifications that respect access
When somebody loses access to a project, their watcher rows and their pending digest entries for that project are removed, so a notification cannot outlive the permission behind it. Watchers can also be enabled per work item type, so an organisation that does not use epics never sees followed notifications about them. There is a wider overview at /task-watchers.
What's included
- Watch and unwatch any work item
- Automatic enrolment on create, assign, mention, and comment, each switchable
- Add and remove other people as watchers
- Candidate picker limited to project members, or company wide when allowed
- Optional watching by people outside the project
- Seven notifiable events: status, field, assignment, comment, attachment, checklist, close
- Per company on and off switch for each event type
- Mute and unmute per item and per person
- One click mute from a signed, verified email link that needs no login
- Immediate delivery for events that cannot wait
- Daily and weekly digests with configurable hour, weekday, and timezone
- Shared digest buffer pruned by age rather than emptied on send
- Watchers enabled per work item type and per type group for epics, features, stories, and tasks
- In app notifications alongside email
- Per company watcher email templates with editable subject and body
- Individual email templates that can be switched off
- Optional notify self so a person can hear about their own change
- Automatic removal of watchers and queued digest rows on loss of project access
- Personal Watching page listing every item you follow
- Queued email fan out so delivery does not slow the request
- Administrator only settings screen
- Multi-tenant company-scoped data isolation
Compatibility
Requires the Orangescrum Self-Hosted edition running PHP 8.2+, CakePHP 4.6+, and PostgreSQL 16. The plugin folder is Watcher and it is gated by the WATCHER_ENABLED flag in config/constants.php. Email fan out and digest delivery run through the queue worker, so that worker has to be running. The daily and weekly digests are driven by console commands, so they need a cron entry each. Multi-tenant aware, so every watcher, setting, type configuration, digest row, and email template is company-scoped.
Installation
A self-hosted install takes a few minutes. Buy the add-on, drop the plugin into your plugins/ directory, run the migrations, and you're live.
- 1
Buy the add-on
Purchase the Task Watchers add-on from /self-hosted/pricing at $499/year per company, payable annually.
- 2
Drop the plugin into your install
Copy the Watcher/ folder into plugins/ on your self-hosted Orangescrum server.
- 3
Enable the feature flag and register the plugin
Add `define('WATCHER_ENABLED', true);` to config/constants.php and register `Watcher` in src/Application.php with `routes => true, bootstrap => true`.
- 4
Run the database migrations
Run `bin/cake migrations migrate -p Watcher` to create the watcher, settings, type configuration, digest queue, and email template tables.
- 5
Start the queue worker
Bring up the queue worker, since watcher emails and digests are fanned out through it rather than sent inside the request that caused them.
- 6
Schedule the digests
Add cron entries for `bin/cake watcher_daily_digest` and `bin/cake watcher_weekly_digest` so the buffered summaries actually go out.
- 7
Choose your settings
Open the Watcher settings screen and decide which of the four automatic enrolment rules apply, which of the seven events notify, whether people may watch outside their projects, and the digest hour, weekday, and timezone.
- 8
Enable the work item types and try it
Switch watchers on for epics, features, stories, or tasks as your organisation needs, then watch an item, add a colleague, and check the Watching page and a test email.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between watching and being assigned?
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Assignment says who is doing the work. Watching says who wants to know about it. A watcher gets the notifications without appearing as the owner, without affecting workload reporting, and without anybody having to pretend a stakeholder is a doer.
Do people get added automatically?
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Yes, on four rules: creating an item, being assigned it, being mentioned on it, and commenting on it. Each rule is switched on or off for the whole company, so you can make enrolment as eager or as quiet as your organisation wants.
Can I stop the email without dropping off the item?
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Yes. Muting keeps you on the watcher list and stops the notifications for that item. Every email also carries a signed link that mutes exactly that item for exactly you, with no login, and the link cannot be reused against a different item or person.
Can each person choose their own events and digest schedule?
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No. Which events notify, whether digests are daily, weekly, or both, and the hour, weekday, and timezone they use are all company settings managed by an administrator. What an individual controls is which items they watch and whether an item is muted.
What happens when somebody loses access to a project?
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Their watcher rows and their queued digest entries for that project are removed, so a notification cannot outlive the permission behind it. That matters most for contractors and for people who change teams.
Can we limit this to certain kinds of work?
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Yes. Watchers are enabled per work item type, with group switches for epics, features, stories, and tasks. An organisation that does not use a layer never gets followed notifications about it.
Can we change the wording of the emails?
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Yes. Watcher emails have their own per company templates with an editable subject and body, and each template can be switched off on its own if you would rather that event only appeared in the in app feed.
Ready to deploy Task Watchers on your own infrastructure?
Talk to our team about Orangescrum Self-Hosted Enterprise: your data, your servers, full control.