No emails on unhandled notifications for new users

[bentuna]

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Steps to reproduce

1. Create a new user account "B" via email and activate the account, log in for the first time.
2. As another user "A", send a Talk message to user B via direct message.
3. See how user B does not get any email notifications - not even hours or days later - never.
4. One week later, as user B,

• check how the notification menu in Nextcloud lists the missed Talk notification
• check how under /settings/user/notifications the setting "Send email reminders about unhandled notifications after:" is set to "1 week" - but emails are sent never.
• change the setting "Send email reminders about unhandled notifications after:" to something else and then again to one hour
• See how with the next cron (~5 minutes later) the email about the unhandled notification is sent.

Expected behaviour

GUI should match actual functionality.
New users should get email notifications by default because especially in the beginning email is often times the only reliable channel to reach the user.

Actual behaviour

See steps

Additional context

We figured out that in the database table oc_notifications_settings for faulty users the field batch_time is 5 and the field next_send_time is 0.
For healthy users the field batch_time is 0, 3600, 10800, 86400 or 604800 and the field next_send_time is 0 (only when batch_time is 0) or a unix time stamp.

Server configuration

Nextcloud version: 32.0.9

[fortytwocpu]

If batch_time is 3600, 10800, 86400 or 604800 then next_send_time can also be 1, which is also healthy (self-healing): https://github.com/nextcloud/notifications/blob/v32.0.9/lib/Model/SettingsMapper.php#L74

If batch_time is 5 and next_send_time is 1 then next_send_time will become 0 again on the next cron job.

Problem 1: So it seems like this is only happening when the default/global email send interval is used (batch_time in the database for the user is set to 5).

Problem 2: New users will automatically get the following (faulty) database entries: batch_time=5, last_send_id=0 and next_send_time=0.

Workaround: As soon as a user overrides their own send interval by setting the interval in the personal notification settings, email get send correctly again. And the database entries are set correctly.

[fortytwocpu]

The behaviour can be traced back to at least 2026-04-08 and Nextcloud v32.0.8.

[nickvergessen]

@bentuna can you share the appconfigs for the notifications app listed by occ config:list notifications ?
Just to understand if you have any values in there

[bentuna]

@bentuna can you share the appconfigs for the notifications app listed by occ config:list notifications ? Just to understand if you have any values in there

{
    "apps": {
        "notifications": {
            "enabled": "yes",
            "installed_version": "5.0.0",
            "setting_batchtime": "1",
            "sound_notification": "yes",
            "sound_talk": "yes",
            "types": "logging"
        }
    }
}

[nickvergessen]

• Most likely a regression from perf: Only apply default settings when user is created or settings are requested #2357
• Could you try if fix(email): Correctly initialize next_send_time field #3078 helps?

[fortytwocpu]

Thank you, we testet your changes and it actually fixed our problem. :)