Email Connector Issue... maybe?

[lassenpc]

I'm sure this is something simple, but I've poured through troubleshooting pages and forums, and I now defer to your expertise.

Installed Email and Alerts server. Verified both services running, everything passed all 'verify' tests.

From the web-interface, using 'quick reply' sends to all correct recipients with no issues, and properly records in history. Also starting and closing tickets sends to all correct (internal and external) recipients with no issues.

From the client. Creating & closing new tickets auto sends correctly to all recipients (internal and external). Now the problem(s): When viewing tickets, and clicking 'email' the clients email address is not showing up in the TO: field, instead it has our 'support@xxx.com' listed; after manually changing that to the correct email address and manually adding 'support@xxx.com' to the CC field, and making sure the TICKET 0500-1234 is in the subject line and send, it is *only* going to internal recipients, and is *not* showing up in the history.

Again, I am sure it is something simple, but I'm lost. Please advise. Thank you!

[AN-Tech]

Leave the email addressed to support@xxx.com assuming that is the public email address that your clients use to send in tickets. Below is a description of how this works taken from the following page.....

There are two email threading scenarios:

1. A customer replies to Support regarding an email sent from the system, which contains a ticket number in the email subject. In this case, the system files the email under the ticket and distributes it to the Ticket Recipients.
2. An employee replies on a customer email, which contains the ticket number in the email subject. The employee needs to send the email to the support email address, and CommitCRM Email Connector will automatically file the email in the system and distribute it to the Ticket Recipients. When a technician Cc or Bcc's the Email Connector, the email will be filed in the ticket, and will not be distributed to Ticket Recipients.


Hope that helps

[lassenpc]

Thanks for the quick reply.

Following the video at 53 seconds in, we are able to click on 'email' which launches the email client (we've tried Thunderbird and Outlook); the external recipient name should be going into the TO field, (which it is not); we have manually added the external recipient to the TO field, and added support@xxx.com to the BCC field; according to the video, once sent, it should show up in History / as saved in DOCS. But that is not happening from the client. Once 'sent' it is only going to the internal recipient, not going to external, and not showing up in History.

Again, does completely work from web-interface. Your continued thoughts on this are appreciated!

[AN-Tech]

With CommitCRM there are two different methods to using email as described in the video you mentioned, Standard correspondence and Correspondence using the CommitCRM Email Connector. Everything in the video seems to be correct and functioning as it should for me. Although I am a bit confused with the part where they say "as soon as the message is sent a copy of the message is saved in the documents folder for that ticket". My understanding is that emails are no longer saved to the documents folder (as of v5.3 I think) and instead the contents of the email are shown on the history tab and from there you can also open the original email.

The way we have used it and how it is described around the 1:30 mark is to leave the public email address (support@xxx.com) in the TO field, not other addresses are necessary. This is what they call the Correspondence using the CommitCRM Email Connector method. Basically when you send the message it ends up back in the CommitCRM email connector mailbox. CommitCRM then sees the new email with a ticket number, looks at the email recipients list for the ticket and sends out copies of the email to the correct people.

By you changing the TO field from support@xxx.com (assuming this is your email connector address) to customer@theirdomain.com (external recipient) you are now using the standard correspondence method. This bypasses the automatic sending to the people listed on the email recipients tab and only goes to the addresses you enter in the TO, CC, and BCC fields. When you add support@xxx.com to the CC or BCC fields this tells CommitCRM to add the email to the history tab (not docs) and not to send the email to the email recipients.

Now that I've said all of this I would say take a look at your history tab and not the docs tab to see if the emails that you BCC'd to the email connector address are listed in there. This should be the case and did work for me when I just tested it now. But like I said we don't use this method we always send TO the email connector and let it distribute the emails. The only time we CC or BCC the email connector is if we want some emails attached to the history of the ticket but not sent to anyone else, and in this case the TO field should be blank.

Also just for testing send in a ticket from a customer email address or something other then your internal addresses. Let CommitCRM send out the automated reply, then go into the ticket in Commit, hit email, leave the email connector address in there and me know what happens. Give it some time because depending on how often you email connector checks messages it could take at least 15 minutes before all of the emails go out, back in, then out again.

Also make sure you refresh the ticket or switch to another and back again so you see all the current info.

[lassenpc]

I concur about email now being listed in History rather than Docs as of 5.3.

Did (partially) straighten out one hiccup (not exactly sure how though....?) Emails being sent via CommitCRM Client are showing up (when not tampering with the TO: support@xxx.com and <blank> BCC fields) in the ticket History. The internal recipients receive the email. However, the intended external recipient still is not.

I did the test as you suggested. Sent in email support request from external recipient to our support@xxx.com; CommitCRM did create a ticket and did auto respond to the external recipient. Went to the new ticket, clicked email, the only address filed in automatically was TO: support@xxx.com (all others were blank and I left them that way).

The email showed up in History (good!) internal recipient received email (good!), external did not (/sigh).

Gut tells me I'm missing a box being (un)checked somewhere.

It seems so simple (and just works) from the web interface by clicking the 'Quick Reply' (external recipients get the email). Not sure yet why the client isn't that way. I'm sure we'll get there though! Any further thoughts?

[AN-Tech]

Don't believe there are any settings for external recipients other then automated new and closed ticket notification.

Any chance that email is being blocked by your external recipients spam filters? Do you have a gmail type of account that you can use as a second test? Send an email to your support@ address as if it was a client sending one in and see what happens. Make sure you create a test account in CommitCRM with this email address so it will attach to an account properly.

[AN-Tech]

Also open the ticket in Commit, go to the external recipients tab and confirm there is a valid email address listed for the external recipient with no typos. I've had plenty of times I was working hard troubleshooting only to find a typo causing the issue :-)

[lassenpc]

Not being blocked; this 'test' account we've setup for the test tickets test emails and so forth is going to a gmail address we setup (actually, my wife's gmail account, and she isn't too happy with me about that, but that's another story!), I checked her Spam filter already, no joy there.

[lassenpc]

Double checked recipient name as well, looks good; since they receive the emails when using web-interface 'quick reply' but not from the CommitCRM Client 'email'... I'm going to look at the Email and Alerts setup interface again, maybe something not configured correctly there?

[natrat]

I'd be interested to see the resolution on this, I had exactly the same problem when I installed this, external recipients are not receiving the email. I ended up not bothering with it and replace the support@xxx.com address with the actual recipients address every time i create an email and not using CommitCRM to track correspondence (I'm more comfortable with it in my Sent Items in Outlook at this stage as I'm a sole operator and do a lot of email from my phone and laptop in the field - that will likely change when i take on some permanent staff though).

What is your network setup? the mail server i'm using is SBS 2008 (Exchange). All relevant permissions are set and tests were fine, my support@xxx.com address also works no problem when customers email it or when I email it (a ticket is created).

regards,
nathan

[natrat]

Oh and does your web interface/ CommitCRM server run on the same box as your mail server?

[natrat]

I've just fixed mine. Even though the test from within serverconfig.exe sent test emails fine, wen i tried to create an email from in CommitCRM after a while i would get an error about invalid host. Fixed it by putting the fully qualified internal domain name in as the mail server ie. instead of SBS2008 i had SBS2008.n-tech.local

all the ticket emails then hit the mailboxes.

this may be unrelated to your problem, if so sorry to part hijack your thread!

[Support Team]

lassenpc,

Please fine some information that may be useful.

ascendnet*provided you with a very accurate information (Thank you!), so I will summarize a few of the points and will try to guide you to some additional options -

1. When sending an email from RangerMSP client you should send to Support@YourBiz.com (as defined for the email connector), the email connector will then distribute it to all of the relevant recipients. You do not need to CC the Support@... address when replying To the connector (BTW, CC the email connector will force internal distribution only, this is why you want to TO: it).

2.*You do not need to specify any other recipients in your email reply, the email connector will distribute the reply to all of the Ticket recipients.

3. natrat's suggest with the FQDM helps in resolving outgoing email delivery many times, however, from what you describe I understand that emails do go out when replying from the Web interface and when an auto response email is sent to customers regarding new tickets I tend to believe that all mail server settings and configuration are configured correctly.

4. When replying to a Ticket, as an Employee, the email reply you send should be sent from your personal Outlook mailbox and email address. Do not reply to Tickets from Support@YourBiz.com, but rather from your employee personal email address. No worries though - the email will be sent to customers from Support@YourBiz.com, yet, you still need to send from you very own email address.

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5. The personal email address you use to send replies (i.e. send TO: Support@YourBiz.com ) should be logged in RangerMSP under your employee record under the Email1 or Email2 fields.
This way, the email connector recognizes that the email message comes from an Employee and consider it as a Reply.
Note - I'm not referring to a mailbox here. So if you have a mailbox with several email address aliases then the very same email address alias you use to send the email reply with should be logged as your email address under your employee record in RangerMSP.

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6. No other Employee record in your RangerMSP should hold the same email address. Verify that only your employee record in RangerMSP holds this email address.


My guess that the problem is somewhere in # 4, 5 and 6.

Let us know how it goes.

Regards,
Sheli

[lassenpc]

Hello!

Verified steps 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 appear to be in good working order; on step 4, question:

-Does / should the Outlook personal mailbox email address need to be the same as the employee's 'personal' address that is listed in CommitCRM Records? (currently it is not)

[Support Team]

Yes, the email address used as the Sender of the email must be the same as the email address stored in RangerMSP under the sender employee record (and only under this employee record).

Let us know how it goes.

Thanks,
Sheli

[lassenpc]

SOLVED - that was the issue; employee email address in CommitCRM was not the same as email address / mailbox in Outlook; made correct changes, PASS. Thank you!

[Support Team]

You are welcome! Thank you for the update.