Email delivery issues are caused by member complaints and bounces.

• A complaint occurs when a member clicks the "mark as spam" button in their email client.
• A bounce indicates an email delivery failure as reported by the intended recipient's ISP or mail provider.

Your site includes a number of email delivery tools to help you track all emails sent from the system and, more importantly, view those that were unsuccessfully delivered. You can view (and potentially resolve) any email delivery issues that have occurred on your site.

NOTE: Refer to the Email Delivery Notifications page to learn how to set up notifications so you and other admins can be notified when delivery issues occur.

Access email delivery tools

To view all of the complaint and bounced emails your member population has received in the past X number of days or months:

1. In the Admin Toolbar, click Admin.

2. Navigate to Email > Email Management > Delivery Management.

Watch the video

NOTE: This video is a comprehensive email management overview. Email delivery issues are discussed starting at 00:07:07.

Search for email delivery issues

On this page, you can search for delivery failures across your member population based on the desired filter criteria, such as Issue Type (and Sub-Type), date range, domain, and even by a specific email address.

TIP: If you just want to see ALL delivery issues across ALL domains, only select an Issue Type and specify the date range.

If you want to narrow your search, the Domain and Email filters are especially important:

• Domain allows you to search for delivery issues associated with a specific mail server, like Hotmail, Gmail, etc. When entering a domain, be sure to spell it out fully, to include the .com, .org, etc. (e.g., hotmail.com, gmail.com).
• Email allows you to focus on issues with a specific member's email address.

TIP: The Date Range menu includes the Custom option that allows you to search back farther than 14 days; use of this filter is encouraged to ensure no issues are potentially missed.

Once your filters are applied, click Apply Filter. Any matching issues are listed below, and you can click their Details buttons to view additional information, access the offending email, and even resolve many issues immediately (or use this information to report those you cannot to Higher Logic).

Resolve email delivery issues

The type of email delivery issue dictates how, and if, it can be resolved.

Issue Types

Email delivery issues are categorized into four issue types:

• Permanent - This issue indicates a permanent problem with the recipient's address that is preventing delivery, and are most often caused by incorrect or invalid email addresses.
• Complaint - Emails are flagged as complaints when a member marks them as spam in their email client. This ceases ALL delivery to a member's address unless the complaint is removed.
• Transient - While this issue indicates a delivery failure, the cause is likely temporary. The most common reasons include full inboxes, messages that exceed the mail client's maximum size limit, and out-of-office replies. Often, these types of issues are resolved on their own.
• Undetermined - The email could not be delivered and the system was unable to determine the cause of failure.

NOTE: Depending on the type of issue, Higher Logic may block future delivery attempts to a specific email address.

Resolving simple delivery issues

Quite often, email delivery issues only require simple troubleshooting:

1. Verify the email address is correct and not otherwise disabled:

1. Verify the primary email address on the member's Profile page is correct.
2. Verify the member has not opted-out of receiving messages on their Profile > My Account > Email Preferences page.
3. Check to see if they've set any overrides for their community Discussion and digest notifications that may be causing confusion, and that they haven't set any of their digests to No Email by accident.

2. Ask the member to check their Spam folder. If Discussion notifications are in their Spam folder, all they need to do is indicate they want to receive messages from this address. Direct them to click the "this is not spam" option within the message or otherwise approve the sender.

Delivery Issue Types

Permanent Issues

NOTE: This Issue Type causes email delivery to be blocked.

Because Permanent blocks often indicate invalid email addresses, you should begin by determining whether this is the case. Send an email to the address from a separate account (e.g., Outlook, Yahoo, Gmail, etc.) requesting confirmation from the member whether their account is valid. If you receive an Undeliverable (mailer-daemon) bounce-back message, this means the address is invalid and should not be receiving email. In this case, click the Archive button to remove the address from the list.

NOTE: You can view archived addresses by changing the Visibility filter to All or Archived.

How to remove permanent blocks

On the other hand, if the member replies confirming their email address is valid, you need to remove the block so they can resume receiving emails. To do so:

1. In the Admin interface, navigate to Email > Email Management > Delivery Management.

2. Make sure Permanent is selected in the Issue Type menu.
3. Set any other applicable filters (e.g., if you know email delivery issues are associated to a specific domain, make sure to enter that in the Domain field).
4. Click Apply Filter to view all resulting email addresses. 

5. Click an issue's Details button.

6. In the pop-up, click Remove Permanent Block at the top. Provide a reason why you unblocked the address in the pop-up, and then click OK.

For certain issue Sub-Types, you may not be able to remove the block yourself, and will need to create a case with Higher Logic resolve the issue.

Complaint Issues

NOTE: This Issue Type causes email delivery to be blocked.

Emails are flagged as Complaints when a member marks them as spam in their email client. For these, simply contact the member to verify their complaint wasn't logged unintentionally; if they confirm they'd like to continue receiving emails, click Remove Complaint to remove the block.

Transient Issues

NOTE: This Issue Type does NOT interfere with email delivery.

While Transient bounces don't stop community email from being sent, and are generally not as urgent as Permanent and Complaint blocks, they may need to be addressed if multiple failures occur. For common Transient issues, the system will provide a Sub-Issue to clarify the problem. For more detailed information, click Details for each offending email to investigate the source of the issue, and then contact the member to resolve it.

Undetermined Issues

NOTE: This Issue Type does NOT interfere with email delivery.

Undetermined bounces occur when the system is unable to pinpoint the cause of the delivery failure, and so there's often no additional information to help resolve the issue. Because these failures don't prevent email from being sent, they often don't require immediate action. However, if you notice several Undetermined bounces with the same member, you may want to contact them to see if you can help resolve the problem.

IP address allowlist

Members will not receive mail if the underlying issue(s) causing non-delivery are not addressed. Reach out to these members and confirm their email address is correct and that their inbox is receiving messages. If there are no problems in these two areas, request they have their IT department add the following domain and IP addresses to their IP address allowlist:

• connectedcommunity.org
• mail.connectedcommunity.org
• 54.240.14.216
• 54.240.14.217
• 54.240.14.218
• 54.240.14.219
• 54.240.14.220
• 54.240.14.221
• 54.240.14.31
• 54.240.14.32
• 54.240.14.78
• 54.240.14.79
• 54.240.14.80
• 54.240.14.106

This will resolve issues resulting from improper spam marking and similar causes.