Author Topic: CC: person receives a copy of every email in To: field (Read 1409 times)

LindseyM · April 25, 2012, 11:01:36 am

We're using 4.1.1 and have a problem with the 'Send Email to Contacts' option. It was used today for an email to 47 people. Another person was specified in the cc: field. The cc: person received 47 emails - a copy of each email sent to the 47 individuals. The process was no different to what we've done hundreds of times before so I have no idea why it has suddenly started to do this. Is it a 4.1.1 bug perhaps?

xavier · April 25, 2012, 02:13:11 pm

Hi,

It has always worked like that, beside a few releases where the CC & BCC where moved to the TO: field (not sure, I think it was a problem only when using SMTP and not sendmail or vice versa)

I assumed it was a feature, but my recommendation was "don't use it if you have more than 1 contact in the to". As you can have token and each email can be different, it would be tricky to know which one to CC/BCC the person.

IMO, the more logical would be that we use the "one email per contact" only civimail and change the simple send mail behaviour so it matches sending a normal mail (ie. everyone in the TO see the others and that's one single email sent with several recipients). It would also mean you can't have token if you have more than one contact in the to field.

Or add a checkbox "send X separate emails (x=nb of contacts in TO)"

But others wanted to keep the existing behaviour (if I recall, the reason was that not every install has civimail enabled)
X+

LindseyM · April 25, 2012, 03:20:18 pm

Hi Xavier
Thanks for the speedy reply. I'm not sure I completely understand. Are you saying that there is no way to cc: someone in 'Send Email to Contacts' without them receiving every email that was sent eg receiving 47 emails in their inbox when they are cc:ed to an email sent to 47 people?! You mention that it has always worked like this but I was pretty sure that this is the first instance of it happening for us and we've been using Civi for almost a year.

In testing just now, use of bcc: and cc: puts those people in the To: field (not ideal, but I know that this is expected behaviour with Civi). However, in both cases, the people I cc:ed and bcc:ed received multiple instances of the same email, with the number of emails relating directly to the number of people in the To: field. Surely this isn't expected behaviour?

I'm only pressing the matter as I'm sure it hasn't been the case for us in the past. Also, the Civi documentation makes no reference to behaviour of this sort and just says "Sending an email as an activity allows you to choose recipients after you start the mailing, as you would in a regular email client. You can choose direct recipients and recipients marked as CC or BCC." There's no mention of these people receiving as many emails in their inbox as there are recipients.

Are you sure it's not a bug?
Lindsey

xavier · April 25, 2012, 03:44:10 pm

Quote from: LindseyM on April 25, 2012, 03:20:18 pm

Hi Xavier
Thanks for the speedy reply. I'm not sure I completely understand. Are you saying that there is no way to cc: someone in 'Send Email to Contacts' without them receiving every email that was sent eg receiving 47 emails in their inbox when they are cc:ed to an email sent to 47 people?! You mention that it has always worked like this but I was pretty sure that this is the first instance of it happening for us and we've been using Civi for almost a year.

Well, each "TO" is receiving a separate message, so logically the CC is there on every one of them...

Quote from: LindseyM on April 25, 2012, 03:20:18 pm

In testing just now, use of bcc: and cc: puts those people in the To: field (not ideal, but I know that this is expected behaviour with Civi). However, in both cases, the people I cc:ed and bcc:ed received multiple instances of the same email, with the number of emails relating directly to the number of people in the To: field. Surely this isn't expected behaviour?

To if I have bob an alice as recipients & Lindsey in BCC, you receives

email 1 to: bob+Lindsey
email 2 to: alice+Linsey

?

Quote from: LindseyM link=topic=24426.msg102780#msg102780

I'm only pressing the matter as I'm sure it hasn't been the case for us in the past. Also, the Civi documentation makes no reference to behaviour of this sort and just says "Sending an email as an activity allows you to choose recipients after you start the mailing, as you would in a regular email client. You can choose direct recipients and recipients marked as CC or BCC."

There's no mention of these people receiving as many emails in their inbox as there are recipients.

Are you sure it's not a bug?

Well
- the CC & BCC are moved to the TO to workaround a mail library bug
- each person in the TO receives a separate email, that can be different (thanks to the token) so if you want someone receiving a copy and that each email can be different...

You logically end up with the poor guy in BCC/CC receiving quite a few emails that are TO him.

Pretty sure I wrote something in the book about "don't use that" a while back ago

Someone more knowledgeable and that has a good use case of the behaviour could join and let us know what's the expected behaviour?

Donald Lobo · April 25, 2012, 07:54:58 pm

yes, the cc gets a copy of each email which can be different based on the tokens used

this has been the behavior for some time, since the beginning

lobo

LindseyM · April 26, 2012, 12:22:10 am

Ok - thanks for clarifying. I guess I had expected it to act like a normal email cc: where you just get one email however many recipients there are in the To: field. Just to clarify - the tests I did used email messages that didn't incorporate tokens so in that sense the emails were the 'same'. The cc: person still received multiple emails so I'm guessing that's expected behaviour too for Civi at the moment.

We'll work around it! Thanks again for the responses.

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Author Topic: CC: person receives a copy of every email in To: field (Read 1409 times)

LindseyM

CC: person receives a copy of every email in To: field

xavier

Re: CC: person receives a copy of every email in To: field

LindseyM

Re: CC: person receives a copy of every email in To: field

xavier

Re: CC: person receives a copy of every email in To: field

Donald Lobo

Re: CC: person receives a copy of every email in To: field

LindseyM

Re: CC: person receives a copy of every email in To: field