Question

Is it possible to stop the Project Backlog plugin from triggering the case update emails?

Situation: case is assigned to a programmer. I change the priority of the case using the Project Backlog plugin. They can an email stating that the case has been modified because they're assigned to that case.

Overall, the update emails feature is great and I want the programmers to get notified on all of the other changes we make to the cases, but just not the case priority using the Project Backlog plugin....only because it adds to the emails they get...don't want to make the programmers any more mad than they need to be :-)

One thought I had was to dig into the code of the plugin, but I don't see that the code for the plugin is available, unlike the various sample plugin projects on the site.

Case FC1943854

Answer 1

cdeszaq is correct, there is currently no way for a plugin to suppress notification emails when editing cases (in FogBugz 7 nor in FogBugz 8). This behavior is a carryover from the early days of FogBugz plugins when we wanted to err on the side of being overly restrictive rather than too "free spirited" in what we allowed plugins to do.

The rationale came down to roughly this: allowing a plugin to suppress email notifications could result in a) a nasty/buggy plugin silently messing with your cases and no one being notified of it or b) a sloppily written plugin unintentionally suppressing notifications that shouldn't be suppressed (e.g., modifying the backlog value of a case and changing who it was assigned and the plugin erroneously suppressing the resulting notification email).

Of course, we've since learned a lot about just how awesome plugins can be and how the more power we give them the more awesome they tend to become. As such, I've filed a case for us to consider adding this functionality in a future release with a note to update this question.

Also, w.r.t. editing the Project Backlog plugin's source: you should find a copy of its source code in [your installation directory]\Plugins\examples\ProjectBacklog

Answer 2

I don't think there is any way to do this right now (or in version 8 as far as I know) because to do so you would likely have to override the "case edit" event that FogBugz uses to know when a case has been changed and sends out an email to all applicable parties (ie. the assignee and anyone subscribed)

In general, the ability (possibly for only admins) to temporarily disable emails while a number of sweeping changes is made would be very useful. If not disabling emails, perhaps a temporary "pause" and then after a timeout, a digest-style email would be sent out, one for each user who would have gotten at least 1 email, that has all of the change events lumped in together.