We’re on Discourse 3.6 and seeing an issue where some users who should be receiving digest emails never do. Here’s what we’ve confirmed for the affected user: enable_digest_emails is true User has been inactive long enough to trigger a digest Email is valid and confirmed No bounce or suppression from the mail provider Other emails (notifications, etc.) send fine No digest email shows up in the Admin → Emails → Sent log When using Admin → Emails → Digest Test, the system correctly shows “Yes, a digest should be sent” — but nothing is actually sent or logged No related errors appear in Sidekiq or production logs. Has anyone else seen digest emails silently fail on 3.6 even when all settings and eligibility checks in the admin UI indicate the user should receive one?

have you checked the user’s settings in their preferences-email tab?

Yes here is their setting, and here is the digest rendering for them telling us it should be sent. [IMG_7947] [IMG_7946]

Update / Repro Steps (Discourse 3.6) I ran an explicit repro for this using the Rails console to confirm what’s happening at the job level. Here’s what we see for the affected user: site: hvac now: 2025-10-15 17:23:01 UTC disable_emails: “no” disable_digest_emails: false default_email_digest_frequency_minutes: 10080 ENV_DISABLE_EMAILS: nil perform_deliveries: nil smtp_address: “smtp.netcorecloud.net” smtp_port: 587 – USER – id: 42122 username: XXXXXXXXXX active: true suspended: false email_digests: true digest_after_minutes: 10080 eligible_by_time: true – LAST 15 EMAIL LOGS – 2025-10-01 | type=digest | bounced=false 2025-09-22 | type=digest | bounced=false perform_deliveries_now: true Then when I force-built the digest manually, Discourse thinks it’s building it but returns: mail = UserNotifications.digest(u) => Built digest mail: subject=nil bytes=50 So Discourse thinks it’s building the digest, but it’s actually empty (subject=nil) — and thus silently skipped when the job runs. No EmailLog entry gets created, and nothing is sent. This confirms: The job enqueues successfully SMTP and deliveries are enabled The digest job exits without error because the mailer returns a blank digest Running the job inline with: Jobs::UserEmail.new.execute(“type” => “digest”, “user_id” => u.id”) produces the same result — no new EmailLog row created. Possible Cause: It seems the digest is being skipped due to an “empty digest” condition — maybe something changed in how Discourse 3.6 evaluates content for inclusion. The Admin → Emails → Digest Test view renders the digest correctly, but the background job sees nothing to include. Summary: :white_check_mark: Eligible user :white_check_mark: Active email + valid SMTP :white_check_mark: Admin Digest Test renders properly :prohibited: Background digest job silently skips (empty digest) :prohibited: No EmailLog or send attempt recorded Would love confirmation from the team — is there possibly a regression in how UserNotifications.digest collects content in 3.6?

Doing a little more work here, we found a handful (out of 4k) users who are actually reliably getting the activity summaries. Comparing one of these users who does get summaries to one who does not doesn’t show any difference in their settings. ===== xxxxx (ID: 4149) ===== Active: true, Suspended: false, Silenced: false Email confirmed: false Digest enabled: true Digest frequency: 10080 minutes Last Seen: 2025-03-24 20:58:55 UTC Last Emailed: 2025-10-16 17:07:53 UTC Muted Categories: User Stats Digest Attempted: 2025-10-16 17:07:53 UTC Total Emails sent:16 ===== xxxxxxx (ID: 42206) ===== Active: true, Suspended: false, Silenced: false Email confirmed: false Digest enabled: true Digest frequency: 10080 minutes Last Seen: 2025-09-14 15:52:54 UTC Last Emailed: 2025-10-01 23:30:33 UTC Muted Categories: User Stats Digest Attempted: 2025-10-16 17:32:34 UTC Total Emails Sent:2 Certainly there are other settings but I thought this was an interesting comparison either way.

Can anyone provide a rails command that we can run to check how many digests / activity summaries are truly overdue? Essentially a health check that the system is in fact sending the summaries as designed.

You can try below rails console query, the active users who have email digests enabled and are due for their next digest email User.joins(:user_option) .where("user_options.email_digests = ?", true) .where("users.suspended_at IS NULL") .where("COALESCE(users.last_emailed_at, users.created_at) < (NOW() - INTERVAL '1 minute' * user_options.digest_after_minutes)") .count

Is it possible the summary is skipped because the user didn’t visit for Suppress digest email after days?

@jahan_gagan that’s useful, but that is going to tell us who is going to get a digest/activity summary, but not who did NOT get their activity summary. Does that make sense? The question is how do we see who is NOT getting the digest that should be.

@Moin we have it set to 0 - to this should not be a factor.

Are you sure 0 disables that? Have you tried a large number instead? app/jobs/scheduled/enqueue_digest_emails.rb 7b588feeb .where( "COALESCE(user_stats.digest_attempted_at, '2010-01-01') = CURRENT_TIMESTAMP - ('1 DAY'::INTERVAL * ?)", SiteSetting.suppress_digest_email_after_days, ) .order("user_stats.digest_attempted_at ASC NULLS FIRST") # If the site requires approval, make sure the user is approved query = query.where("approved OR moderator OR admin") if SiteSetting.must_approve_users? query = query.limit(GlobalSetting.max_digests_enqueued_per_30_mins_per_site) query.pluck(:id) end

Digest/Activity Summary emails not sending for users even though all conditions are met (Discourse 3.6)

Product Support

Jacob_Peebles (Jacob Peebles) October 23, 2025, 10:10pm 17

Oh, spoke to soon here, the moving of the frequency worked for one group of users (one site) but another, it did nothing. The mystery continues…

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Digest/Activity Summary emails not sending for users even though all conditions are met (Discourse 3.6)

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