Incoming webhooks notify users and we can't prevent it

[mksondej]

Summary

Incoming webhooks notify users and we can't prevent it.

Steps to reproduce

1. Have a software with its own accounts and comment system + webhooks to notfiy slack/mattermost (e.g Azure DevOps).
2. Write a comment with @FirstName LastName to notify somebody in said software.
3. When mattermost picks up that event and writes a message to a channel, it sees @Something in the contents and notifies user with that login (see that it ignores what comes after space). This way it often notifies the wrong user.

Expected behavior

Webhooks don't notify users automatically unless enabled. It would be useful to have a config for that when creating the webhook. If checked it would escape message contents.

Observed behavior (that appears unintentional)

Webhooks assume all systems have the same logins and always notify users.

[amyblais]

@Amonith What Mattermost version are you on?

[mksondej]

@amyblais 5.19.0

[amyblais]

Do you mean that it notifies users who have the same first name and not the one user with the full username?

[mksondej]

@amyblais Well pretty much. Exact scenario (names changed):
On MM we have users: "Marylin Manson" with login @Marylin, and "Marylin Monroe" with login @Monroe.
Azure DevOps (and probably a lot of other software) uses full names for notifications (to be exact it automatically changes @login to full names), so for example users can write a comment with "Hey @Marylin Monroe, can you look at this?". When that comment is posted to Mattermost by an automatic incoming webhook, it notifies the user @Marylin, so the wrong one.

In my opinion matching by full name wouldn't be a reasonable solution either. It'd be better to allow disabling automatic user mentions altogether when setting up the webhook for a channel, because we can't assume that other software we're integrating with has even the same users (@lorem in MM and @lorem from that software can be 2 different people).

[amyblais]

Thanks, opened a ticket: https://mattermost.atlassian.net/browse/MM-22611.