Email preview tracking

Content-related email notifications provide users with a way to stay informed about the content within their digital workplace. These notifications contain a tracking pixel that records when the email has been previewed. A count of these previews can be found on the article itself in its information box and activity page. This information can be used to better understand how workplace users are consuming content.

The tracking pixel is not visible in the email notification. However, if a user does not load images within their emails, no preview will be recorded when they view the notification email.

Ensuring the tracking pixel can record previews

For the tracking pixel to be able to report previews, your users need to be receiving the notifications, and have images within the email must be displayed. 

Email clients such as Microsoft Outlook may block images from unrecognized email senders. While users can do this individually with Microsoft Outlook (Home > Junk > Junk Email Options), consider having this applied for all users of an organization as a Group Policy or with an Azure PowerShell applet (this will need to be done by an organization's IT administrator). In addition to allowing the tracking pixel to function as intended, doing this will also reduce the likelihood of emails being placed in junk mail folders.

Reporting of previews

The tracking pixel will report previews on Blog, Wiki, Event, Forum, and File content types when they are included in the following notification types:

• Instant Subscription notifications
• @mentions

When a user opens an email, if images are loaded, a preview will be recorded for that article. The total of all email previews on wiki articles, calendar events, forum topics, and files is displayed on the content's information panel.

Details regarding who and when content has been previewed are reported on the activity page of blog articles, wiki articles, calendar events, forum topics, and files.

This preview information is not currently available in Workplace Analytics or Data Feeds.

Note: The tracking pixel is unique to each initial recipient of a notification email that contains content. As a result, forwarding the email can result in additional views being attributed to the original recipient of the forwarded email. Similarly, viewing an email multiple times will result in additional previews being logged.