Notification Management Best Practices

Mailing list and GitHub notification best practice

The Kubernetes Mailing list or Google Groups functions as the primary means of asynchronous communication for the project’s Special Interest Groups (SIG) and Working Groups (WG). That’s why you may want to set your filters in your email account to attain a good signal-to-noise ratio with regards to the mailing list messages and GitHub notifications. All the steps below are for Gmail users, however similar filters can be made in other email clients.

Creating filters for Kubernetes Mailing lists

It depends on the SIG or/and WG you are involved in. You can setup filters for your Gmail account to be able to categorize emails from different mailing lists.

Create a filter following the procedure below:

• In your Gmail account click on Settings:
  • Filters and Blocked Addresses -> Scroll down and click create a new filter
  • In the to fields write the email of the SIG’s Google Group.
  • Create filter -> Check the box ** Apply the label** and create new label by choosing New label… in the dropdown list.
  • Click on the Create filter.
• Create filter directly for lists:
  • Matches: list:“dev@kubernetes.io”
  • Do this: Apply label “lists/kubernetes-dev”

For more assistance on creating filters, see the Gmail help page on Creating rules to filter your email.

Creating filters for Kubernetes Github notifications

These below suggested Gmail filters can help you organize and obtain better signal GitHub notification emails.

Before you begin, you must know how to create filters in Gmail. For this procedure, see the Gmail help page on Creating rules to filter your email.

• Apply a blue label on anything kubernetes-related:
  • Matches: (kubernetes OR kubernetes-client OR kubernetes-sigs OR kubernetes-csi)
  • Do this: Apply label “k8s”, Mark it as important
• Archive your own actions (sending these is an option in Github’s settings). You can send them but also archive them, so whenever you need to see the history of an issue you can:
  • Matches: to:(your_activity@noreply.github.com)
  • Do this: Skip Inbox, Mark as read
• Skip bot comments:
  • Matches: (from:(notifications@github.com) (from:(k8s-merge-robot) OR from:(Kubernetes Prow Robot) OR from:(k8s-ci-robot)))
  • Do this: Skip Inbox, Mark as read
• Skip push notifications:
  • Matches: to:(push@noreply.github.com)
  • Do this: Skip Inbox, Mark as read
• Apply a red label on things assigned to you and/or things request to be reviewed:
  • Matches: to:(assign@noreply.github.com)
  • Do this: Star it, Apply label “gh/assigned”, Mark it as important
  • Matches: to:(review_requested@noreply.github.com)
  • Do this: Star it, Apply label “gh/requested_review”, Mark it as important
• Apply an orange label on things you commented on:
  • Matches: to:(comment@noreply.github.com)
  • Do this: Star it, Apply label “gh/commented”
• Apply a yellow label on things you have been mentioned on:
  • Matches: to:(mention@noreply.github.com)
  • Do this: Apply label “gh/mentioned”
• Apply a grey label:
  • Matches: to:(team_mention@noreply.github.com)
  • Do this: Apply label “gh/team_mention”
  • Matches: to:(author@noreply.github.com)
  • Do this: Star it, Apply label “gh/authored”, Mark it as important
• Skip messages about issues that you are not participating in, but leave them unread:
  • Matches: from:(notifications@github.com) to:(subscribed@noreply.github.com)
  • Do this: Skip Inbox
• Categorize per repository:
  • Matches: list:(community.kubernetes.github.com)
  • Do this: Apply label “k8s/community”

These suggestions come largely from an old kubernetes-dev mailing list thread on Gmail filters for Kubernetes.

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