This article details a current Known Issue. When the issue is resolved, the article will be archived.

Description

Over the last two weeks, a subset of Higher Logic Informz customers have experienced an increase in messages failing to send. This can occur for many reasons, including a bridge not connecting or an issue with an integrated Target Group.

The purpose of this article is to explain:

• why this happens
• and what steps you should take if it does.

Why is this happening?

Over the past month, various customers have experienced issues saving messages and templates during high-volume periods. We identified that our Mailing Scheduler process was adding additional load onto the servers during these times.

We rewrote the Informz Mailing Scheduler process to reduce the issues it was causing related to saving messages and templates:

• We spent approximately two weeks testing and refining the code within our testing environments.
• We applied the update to our smallest production environment to test it live.
• In this first small test, we discovered some new issues in the production environment that we resolved.
• We then applied these updates to our next two largest production environments.
• We're currently in the process of working through new things that we have uncovered. This is causing some messages to be delayed and/or fail. We are working on this.
• Every day we are evaluating and tuning the scheduler to reduce the items which appear as failed messages.
• We have a team proactively monitoring all messages so they can alert the appropriate teams should delays arise.

You may run across these failures as we continue to make improvements, but know that our goal is to have your message send when you expect it to and without delay.

Your message has failed; now what?

Higher Logic Informz will indicate a message has failed to send on the initial attempt by moving the message back to the In-Progress Message list and prepending the message name with "Processing," as shown below:

IMPORTANT: While the message is labeled as "Processing," the system will automatically resend a failed message twice. These resends will occur 15 and 30 minutes after the original send time. DO NOT resend a message during this time, as this may result in duplicates for your recipients.

If the message still does not successfully send after these retries, the status of the message on the In-Progress list will change from "Processing" to “Send Failed,” as shown below:

One common reason for failure is a timeout due to a large integration data sync on send (the Mailing Scheduler changes reduced the timeout to reduce blocking issues). This causes the message to be marked as “Processing” on the In-Progress list; however, the sync will continue in the background. The scheduler will retry after 15 minutes and again after 30 minutes to see if the sync has completed; if it has, it should successfully schedule the email for delivery. In addition, the "Processing" annotation will be removed.

• Higher Logic staff can manually retry failed messages after the two automated attempts.
• Higher Logic is actively monitoring and retrying messages that have not resolved with automated retries. 
• Prior to retrying the message, Higher Logic staff checks to make sure a copy of the failed message has not been created and resent. If this is the case, the retry of the original will be halted to avoid duplicate emails. We have been continuously tuning over the past few weeks and have substantially reduced the emails which require manual retries.

In some instances, the message shows in the In-Progress list as Processing/Send failed and simultaneously in the Scheduled list. If, after thirty minutes, that message is still showing as failed, check the following:

• Bridge Status
  • Verify you can connect to your integration
• Confirm the message is not in the Sent list after 30 minutes of original send failure
• Target Groups (Edit message > Properties tab > Targeting)
  • Are you able to get a count on all groups? (Contacts > Groups)
  • Does your targeting contain deleted groups? If so, tests will not send and messages will fail.
  • Do your Compound Target Groups contain any deleted groups? If so, tests will not send and messages will fail.
• If using personalization, verify it has been entered properly and you are sending to a group
• Options used to send the message
  • Sending to a frequently used group
    • Recommend using the Optimized Delivery Method
      • Messages are sent over a 24-hour period based upon when the contact historically has opened messages. This is most effective when used with groups that are frequently sent to.
    • Sending to > 50,000 contacts
      • Recommend using the Distributed Delivery Method
        • The group will be divided, and the message will be sent over the number of hours or days selected. This is best suited for messages with greater than 50,000 recipients.

After checking all the above:

1. Copy the original message and give it a slightly different name.
2. Update message, if necessary.
3. Update Deliver Method.
4. Re-send the message.

If the message fails again, submit a support ticket to informzsupport@higherlogic.com.  In your ticket,  include the name of each message you attempted to send and when the message  needs to be sent by.

A member of our team will make sure your message is sent.