Solved Welcome email sending issue

[PrimeNickB]

Hi, sorry if this question has been answered previously - I've searched but cannot find any information related to my problem.

Can anyone advise on the procedure for sending Welcome emails, with regards to sending an email to a mailbox that wasn't currently 'live' at the time of sending the email, i.e. the email would have been rejected by the recipient's mail server?

We have a situation where an existing extension was re-used for a new staff member but, due to issues beyond our control, their mailbox on our external mail hosts didn't get set up as expected and was, therefore, rejecting emails - from 3CX and other services.

Since the mailbox has become 'live', and is accepting emails from the other services we use, we've tried sending the 3CX Welcome email but to no avail. Our mail hosts have checked their logs and no emails even make it to their boundaries, let alone get rejected. Changing the email against the extension to another, existing, user email address gets the email delivered.

My question is, does 3CX mark an email address as 'bad', if the initial Welcome email doesn't get delivered successfully and, going forward, stops the mail system trying to send emails to the address from then on?

Any information on this problem would be gratefully received.

 

[PrimeNickB]

I'd just like to add that our 3CX environment is a hosted one and, as the provider doesn't have an answer, I thought I'd try the forums.

 

[Daniel Ward]

+1 for finding this out.

We've had this issue a few times, due to needing to get the credentials to the end user we tended to amend the email address to ours and then forward on.. which obviously doesn't explain why it's happening but does show the mail is being sent OK.

 

[PrimeNickB]

@Daniel Ward That's what we ended up doing. Unfortunately, when our hosting company approached 3CX, it appears that they don't either store or have access to any SMTP routing logs and, as such, can't provide us with diagnostic information.

Having had the experience where welcome emails aren't delivered correctly the first time and the sender then blocks the email address until a request is made to lift the block; I'm wondering if that's the case in this instance?

Thanks for your response.

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

My question is, does 3CX mark an email address as 'bad', if the initial Welcome email doesn't get delivered successfully and, going forward, stops the mail system trying to send emails to the address from then on?

If you are using the 3CX SMTP and you send a welcome email to a non "live" mailbox which will result in the email not being able to be delivered then the 3CX SMTP will stop trying sending emails to that specific email address. This is done to stop the SMTP server from being blacklisted or marked as Spam which will result in all your emails not being delivered.
If you have an email address you would like to remove from 3CX SMTP "blacklist" you can use the contact form to do so: https://www.3cx.com/contact-form/
Just select that you are an existing costumer and provide your licence key to proceed to the next step. Choose the category "PBX EXpress (Cloud Instances)" and use the message field for your request.

 

[PrimeNickB]

Brilliant, exactly what I thought was happening.

Can I make one point:- My hosting company apparently contacted 3CX regarding this issue and were told that they'd need to upgrade our environment to SP6 just for 3CX to investigate the issue.

You've provided me with a reason for the issue AND a method of resolution that I couldn't get from my hosting company.

Please could you look into your support team's responses to reseller questions to provide this same information to them so that the people who ultimately use the system don't have to resort to asking on forums for the required information?

Thank you for your quick response though.

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

Glad i could help and thank you for your feedback. Please note that you were probably asked to upgrade to SP6 as older versions are not able to activate against our activation server because of a certificate change.
Your maintenance has been extended until the 31st of October (if it was not valid) to enable you to upgrade so i would recommend you do so. You can also read our support procedures here: https://www.3cx.com/ordering/

 

[PrimeNickB]

Hi Yiannis, our environment was working fine without the SP6 update and 3CX stated that we needed to update it before they'd consider providing our hosting company with support for the reported issue.

At no point was the reason given to me that it was due to a certificate change, or any other reason.

Anyway, I'm hoping that someone will respond to my request for the email address to be removed from the SMTP blacklist, so I can test that everything's sorted and can report back here.

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

An email was sent in September regarding the need to upgrade to the latest pack to all partners and registered users that were running previous versions of the system. If you did not receive such an email then your reseller definitely should have. In any case the system must be upgraded to avoid any future issues with activation.
Let us know if the issue with the email is resolved.

 

[PrimeNickB]

I appreciate that there are communications between 3CX and your resellers that end users aren't always privy to.

I can confirm that 3CX support have removed the email with issues from their blacklist and I have now received the welcome email required.

Thank you for your assistance with this matter and the case is now closed.

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

Glad to see the issue has been resolved and thank you for the update.