Never Miss the Update That Matters: Introducing Watchers

On any busy project, the people who need to know about a change are rarely just the assignee.

A stakeholder is waiting on a release. A lead is keeping an eye on a risky task. The teammate who originally raised the issue wants to know how it gets resolved. Today, those people either get pulled into a flood of notifications they didn’t ask for – or, worse, they find out about an important change too late.

The new Watcher capability for Orangescrum Enterprise Enterprise fixes that. It lets users deliberately follow the Tasks and Stories they care about, and receive exactly the updates they choose.

The gap we set out to close

Until now, Orangescrum notified people only implicitly. The assignee, anyone mentioned, and commenters were notified – all gated by per-user settings. There was a notification-less “star” for favourites, and a subscribe pattern that only worked for releases. But there was no way to deliberately follow a work item, no way to opt out, and no way to even see who was paying attention.

Watchers turns following into an explicit, controllable action – and gives administrators real governance over how much notification volume that creates.

How it works

Follow what matters

Watch a Task or Story to get notified of status changes, field updates, assignee changes, and comments – even when you’re not the assignee. One click to watch, one click to stop.

Automatic enrollment, when you want it

Administrators can choose to auto-enroll creators, assignees, commenters, and mentioned users as watchers, based on rules they set. So the people already involved in an item stay in the loop without anyone remembering to add them.

Daily and weekly digests

Not every update needs an instant ping. Instead, roll up activity on watched items into a daily progress digest or a weekly summary, delivered at the time your company configures. Immediate events flow in near-real-time, while progress digests are aggregated and sent once per period.

Mute vs. unwatch

Unwatch to stop following entirely. Or mute to stay subscribed without notifications – useful when an item is noisy right now but you still want it on your list. Muting always wins, so automatic enrollment can never silently re-subscribe a user who chose to mute.

See who’s watching

A watcher count, an avatar stack, and a dedicated panel show who’s following an item. In addition, a personal “Watching” view collects everything you follow in one place.

Signal, not noise

The whole point of Watchers is to reduce notification fatigue, not add to it. Explicit follow means people only get updates on items they chose. Mute and digests give them volume control. And by default, the person who made a change isn’t notified about their own change. On top of all that, each user’s existing notification preferences are always respected – company settings set the boundaries, but individuals still tune what reaches them.

Administrators stay in control

The Watcher module is gated at the company level and stays off until enabled. From there, administrators decide:

• which work-item types support watchers,
• which participants are automatically enrolled,
• whether manual watching is allowed at all,
• whether colleagues outside a project can be added as watchers,
• exactly which events fire notifications, and
• the send times for daily and weekly digests.

Security is enforced where it counts. Users can only watch items within their company, so cross-tenant access is impossible. Every watcher only ever receives updates they’re permitted to see, and that visibility is re-validated at the moment a notification is sent. Finally, if someone loses access to a project, their watches for those items are pruned or muted.

Why it matters

Watchers gives your teams cross-functional visibility into the work that matters most – fewer missed updates on important items, less notification noise through explicit follow and digests, and administrative control over scope and volume. It also lays a foundation the platform will build on, extending the same follow model to other entities like Projects over time.

Who should use it

• Stakeholders tracking a release – a product owner or client sponsor follows a release-critical task and gets a clean daily digest, informed without sitting in every standup.
• Oversight without micromanaging – leads watch high-priority items and see status changes, reassignments, and comments as they happen, with no need to ping the assignee for updates.
• Cross-team dependencies – a team blocked by another team’s task watches the blocker and learns the moment it moves, so there are fewer surprises at the handoff.
• Incident and defect follow-along – everyone affected by a critical defect follows it and gets real-time updates through resolution, then un watches once it’s closed.
• Bringing in outside experts – with admin approval, add a subject-matter expert from outside the project as a watcher; they see only what they’re permitted to.
• A personal focus list – each person curates a “Watching” view of the items that matter across projects, muting the noisy ones without unfollowing.

What’s new: key features at a glance

• Manual follow/unfollow – one-click Watch and Un watch on Task and Story detail views.
• Automatic enrollment – auto-add creators, assignees, commenters, and mentioned users per admin rules.
• Mute without un watching – suppresses delivery while staying subscribed, and mute overrides auto re-enrollment.
• Event-level triggers – per-company toggles for status, field, assignee, and comment notifications.
• Daily and weekly digests – aggregated progress summaries delivered at configured times.
• Watcher visibility – watcher count, avatar stack, panel, and a personal “Watching” view.
• Company-level governance – master switch, per-type enablement, outside-project rules, and delivery scheduling.
• Tenant-safe by design – permission and tenant checks enforced server-side, re-validated at send time.

How to get started

1.  Enable the module. Ask an administrator to turn on the Watcher module at the company level – it is off by default.
2.  Choose which work-item types support watchers. Decide whether Tasks, Stories, or both are watchable in your company.
3.  Set your enrollment rules. Configure which participants (creators, assignees, commenters, mentioned users) are auto-enrolled as watchers.
4.  Configure notification events and digests. Choose which events fire notifications and set delivery times for daily and weekly digests.
5.  Start following the work that matters. Individually, click Watch on any Task or Story you want to track, and use Mute or Un watch to  manage volume as needed.