Peculiar behavior when "away" or "out-of-office" option is turned on

[ctarascio]

Hi,
   We are running CiviCRM 2.0.4 and we are using the UAS CiviSMTP service.
   Back in May, one of my co-workers sent a mass mailing. Mostly, it went fine but several weeks later, he received a bunch of "Away" messages from people who had been part of the May mailing. In an effort to see if this was just a fluke, I did some testing and this is what I found:

Scenario 1
--Turned on the "away" option in my verizon.net account
--Sent an email from my afsc.org account to my verizon.net account
--The afsc.org account did not receive the "away" message
--The verizon.net account did, in fact, receive the email
--The CiviMail report indicated that the message sent to verizon.net "bounced" with bounce type="unknown"
--I duplicated the above using a "gmail" account instead of a verizon account

Scenario 2
--Turned on the "away/out-of-office" option in my afsc.org account
--Sent an email from my verizon.net account to my afsc.org account
--The verizon.net account did receive the "away" message
--The afsc.org account did, in fact, receive the email
--The CiviMail report indicated that the message sent successfully

It appears that "away" messages work properly if the email is sent from accounts outside our domain, but not when emails are sent from accounts within our domain. Assuming this theory is correct, does anyone have any ideas why this might be happening?

Thanks,
Cynthia

[Piotr Szotkowski]

Do you have any idea whether the away emails are sent during the initial SMTP session or in a separate SMTP session?

Various mail servers do it in various ways, and this might be just the case for the discrepancy – if the away is sent during the same SMTP session, CiviMail (mis)treats it as a bounce, while an away sent ‘separately’ might not trigger (or reach) CiviMail at all.

[ctarascio]

Hello Piotr,
   I have no idea whether the away emails are sent during the initial SMTP session or in a separate SMTP session. Is there a way that I can determine this? Is this a question for Shane?
   Honestly, I wouldn't know where to begin to debug this. All I can tell you is that my test group only included 2 mail servers: afsc.org and verizon.net. My co-worker's mailing went to several hundred people with a variety of mail servers. Both mailings were through the CiviSMTP service.
   If you can give me something more to go on, I will be glad to follow your instructions.

Thanks,
Cynthia

[Piotr Szotkowski]

I have no idea whether the away emails are sent during the initial SMTP session or in a separate SMTP session. Is there a way that I can determine this? Is this a question for Shane?

I think Shane might be the best address for this question, as he can check the SMTP logs of CiviSMTP to verify whether the away messages that were treated as bounces were sent during the initial SMTP conversation.

All I can tell you is that my test group only included 2 mail servers: afsc.org and verizon.net. My co-worker's mailing went to several hundred people with a variety of mail servers.

Do they received any ‘normal’ away messages (from addresses CiviMail considered as successful deliveries), or were all away messages eaten by CiviMail (and the mailings marked as bounced)?

[ctarascio]

Hi,
   Scenario #2 received "normal" away messages and everything worked as it should. It is Scenario #1 that is not handling "Away" messages properly.
   I will post a link to this post in the CiviSMTP section of the forum. Hopefully Shane will be able to shed some light on the issue.

Thank You Piotr,
Cynthia

[Piotr Szotkowski]

Scenario #2 received "normal" away messages and everything worked as it should. It is Scenario #1 that is not handling "Away" messages properly.

Yes, I understood that. I was asking whether the original mailing (your coworker’s) resulted in any away messages (and whether their originating addresses were not considered as bouncing by CiviMail).

[ctarascio]

Sorry.. I obviously misunderstood 

   My co-worker forwarded me 3 of the away mesages that he received in late June from the mailing he sent on May 23rd. Two of the away messages were from the same mailing. In all 3 cases I found that the emails were delivered successfully and they were not considered bounces: I did not find the email address listed in "bounces" as I did with my test mailing.
   So...
1. Why were these away messages so delayed in reaching his mailbox?
2. Why did the test message I sent in Scenario1 consider the away response a bounce?

Thanks,
Cynthia

[Piotr Szotkowski]

My co-worker forwarded me 3 of the away messages that he received in late June from the mailing he sent on May 23rd. Two of the away messages were from the same mailing. In all 3 cases I found that the emails were delivered successfully and they were not considered bounces: I did not find the email address listed in "bounces" as I did with my test mailing.

Ok, so this works exactly like in your two scenarios (if we disregard the delay in your coworker’s case) – either an away it eaten by CiviMail and treated like a bounce, or the away gets delivered properly and CiviMail considers the delivery a success.

(My guess is that in the second case CiviMail doesn’t even know there was an away, i.e., the away didn’t reach it.)

1. Why were these away messages so delayed in reaching his mailbox?

That’s a good question. There’s only one way to check, and it’s to look at these emails’ headers – for starters, they will contain all the dates in the given away’s life, so you can see where exactly was the delay.

If my above guess is wrong and the away did indeed reach CiviMail (and then got forwarded to your coworker), then it’s possible that the delay got introduced by CiviMail – but that, again, will be clear from the headers.

2. Why did the test message I sent in Scenario1 consider the away response a bounce?

My guess is that verizon.net is sending away messages right there during the initial SMTP session, while afsc.org is sending them as separate SMTP connections. If so, CiviMail might be treating verizon.net’s away as some kind of error, and hence marking it as an unknown bounce (while the separately-sent afsc.org away doesn’t reach CiviMail at all, or reaches it and just gets forwarded, without being considered a bounce).