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🔔 Watch & Stay Current

🔔 Watch & Stay Current

Watch & Stay Current

How to subscribe to OpenELIS Global documentation updates so changes find you instead of you having to find them.

Why this matters

The OpenELIS Global Confluence space is the living source of truth for product, implementation, and developer documentation. It updates continuously — between release cycles, important pages can change multiple times per week. If you rely on this documentation operationally, you want updates to come to you rather than discovering changes accidentally weeks later.

This guide explains the three subscription mechanisms (Confluence, GitHub, OpenMRS Talk) and which one fits which audience.

Subscribing to Confluence pages

How to watch a single page

  1. Open the page you want to watch.

  2. Click the bell icon at the top right of the page.

  3. Choose Watch this page. You'll be emailed whenever the page is edited.

How to watch a section (parent page + all children)

Same flow, but instead of "Watch this page" choose Watch this page and its children. Useful for following an entire section without ticking every page individually.

How to manage your subscriptions

Click your profile picture at the top right → Personal settings → Email notifications. You can adjust digest cadence (immediate, daily, weekly) and unsubscribe in bulk.

How to watch the whole space

From the space sidebar, click ••• → Watch space. This is verbose — expect a lot of email. Recommended only for project maintainers and doc team.

Recommended subscriptions by role

If you're a lab end user

Most of what changes in the docs you don't need to track — your lab admin will brief you on changes. The one thing worth watching:

  • Releases — high-level new-version announcements

If you're a lab administrator

  • Releases — know when a new version is coming

  • Modules & Features + children — module documentation evolves continuously, especially during active release cycles

  • Your specific country implementation page (Madagascar, Ethiopia, Indonesia, etc.) — deployment-specific updates land there

If you're an implementer

If you're an operator

  • For Operators + children — runbook updates, troubleshooting additions

  • Releases + watch GitHub releases for security patches and bug fixes

  • Troubleshooting — incident playbook additions

If you're a developer

Subscribing to GitHub

For code-level changes (security patches, bug fixes, new features in flight):

  1. Go to DIGI-UW/OpenELIS-Global-2.

  2. Click Watch (top right).

  3. Choose Custom to subscribe just to Releases (recommended for most users) — that gives you a notification only when a tagged release ships.

  4. Or choose All Activity if you want every commit and PR (recommended only for active contributors).

Subscribing to OpenMRS Talk

For discussion, design conversations, community announcements:

  1. Create an account at talk.openmrs.org if you don't have one.

  2. Go to the OpenELIS Global category.

  3. Click the bell icon at the top of the category and choose your notification level:

    • Watching — emailed on every new thread and reply (verbose but thorough)

    • Tracking — no email by default, but you'll see counts in your Talk inbox

    • Normal — emailed only if directly tagged

Most active community members are on Tracking with selective Watching of specific threads.

Suggested baseline subscription

If you're not sure where to start, here's a low-friction baseline that catches the most important updates without flooding your inbox:

  1. Watch this Confluence space's Releases page

  2. Watch the section page that matches your primary role (For Lab Staff, For Implementers, For Developers, For Operators)

  3. Subscribe to GitHub Releases only on the main repo

  4. Tracking on the OpenMRS Talk OpenELIS Global category (no email; just see when you visit)

That gives you new-version announcements, role-specific doc updates, code releases, and the option to drop into Talk discussions when something interests you — without continuous email spam.

What if I'm getting too many notifications?

  • Confluence: Personal settings → Email notifications → switch from immediate to daily or weekly digest

  • GitHub: switch from "All Activity" to "Releases only" on the watched repo

  • OpenMRS Talk: switch from Watching to Tracking on the category

Related

  • Community — top-level community page

  • Get Help — how to ask for help when you need it