how to track iis generated email status

[Dica]

i've got a client that wants to be able to review records about IIS
generated emails.

in his own words, he wants the "ability to track and report message status
(i.e. how many messages were sent successfully, how many were blocked, how
many bounced back with an incorrect address)"

i'd start by adding a new row containing the email address, dateTime, etc
when first sending the email, but how to track the rest of the info? for
instance, if an email bounces back, does it bounce back to IIS or to the
"from" email address? what about the blocked (i.e. spam filter) emails? is
there a way to track blocked email? since most spam filters don't generate
response emails, there's not much i can really do about this, is there?

this will be run off an IIS6 server. can anybody tell me my options?

tks

 

[Jeff Cochran]

i've got a client that wants to be able to review records about IIS
generated emails.

in his own words, he wants the "ability to track and report message status
(i.e. how many messages were sent successfully, how many were blocked, how
many bounced back with an incorrect address)"

i'd start by adding a new row containing the email address, dateTime, etc
when first sending the email, but how to track the rest of the info? for
instance, if an email bounces back, does it bounce back to IIS or to the
"from" email address? what about the blocked (i.e. spam filter) emails? is
there a way to track blocked email? since most spam filters don't generate
response emails, there's not much i can really do about this, is there?

this will be run off an IIS6 server. can anybody tell me my options?

Best option would be to use Exchange, since some of this is available
easily there. Some just won't ever be available. The SMTP log files
will give you most of this as well. But for example, when I block you
as a sender, my system drops your message (Black Hole is the term).
You don't have a clue whether it got received or not, I send you no
indication that I ever existed. That is one you'll never track.

Jeff

 

[Dica]

Best option would be to use Exchange, since some of this is available
easily there. Some just won't ever be available. The SMTP log files
will give you most of this as well. But for example, when I block you
as a sender, my system drops your message (Black Hole is the term).
You don't have a clue whether it got received or not, I send you no
indication that I ever existed. That is one you'll never track.

thanks jeff, i suspected as much.

the project manager is suggesting i can resolve this by using CdoDSNOptions
Enum to generate a received receipt. i'm not familiar with the object and am
having a hard time finding my about it online. would this be an option? if
so, know where i can find some sample code?

tks again.

 

[Jeff Cochran]

thanks jeff, i suspected as much.

the project manager is suggesting i can resolve this by using CdoDSNOptions
Enum to generate a received receipt. i'm not familiar with the object and am
having a hard time finding my about it online. would this be an option? if
so, know where i can find some sample code?

You might start here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d.../en-us/e2k3/e2k3/_cdo_imessage_dsnoptions.asp

As far as I know, this doesn't work outside an Exchange environment.
But you could try the CDO newsgroups for better help there.

Jeff

 

[Patrice]

Not always. You'll *request* a received receipt but the destination server
will choose wether or not he should honor this request (and my guess is that
most servers won't).

Bascially any means you can find can be countered for privacy reasons...

Patrice

--

 

[Dica]

You might start here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d.../en-us/e2k3/e2k3/_cdo_imessage_dsnoptions.asp

As far as I know, this doesn't work outside an Exchange environment.

do you mean an Exhcange server on the sender side or the recipeint side?
i've read that the smtp protocal has no standard support for delivery
notifications, so you can't always count on it (i.e. mac server).

But you could try the CDO newsgroups for better help there.

yeah, already have, but it gets a lot less traffic than these general ones
and i've gotten no response so far.

thanks jeff

 

[Dica]

Not always. You'll *request* a received receipt but the destination server
will choose wether or not he should honor this request (and my guess is that
most servers won't).

right, but it's actually the delivery status notificaition i'm interested
in. the read receipt is sent to the originator's "from" address, which does
me no good since i can't read that info. i need my app to be able to open
and parse smtp logs for delivery status notificaitons.

Bascially any means you can find can be countered for privacy reasons...

yeah, that makes sense but i'm getting pressured from the PM to find a
solution that works for sure and i want to simply direct him to some kind of
conclusive documentation that states that what he's looking for can't be
reliably done. i've already suggested that we implement a "Click to confirm
you've received this" solution, but he's not satisfied with that.

 

[Patrice]

For the Delivery Status Notification try :
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q302839

IMO just include in your stats the number of mails for which you have no
news.

Try perhaps to see if delivery status is not already turned off or can be
disabled for your PM ? It should allow to show him that you can't get for
sure a DSN...

 

[Jeff Cochran]

do you mean an Exhcange server on the sender side or the recipeint side?

Both. This works pretty well in a pure Exchange environment, such as
a corporate mail network. But it's not an RFC standard, so
implementation in any other mail server is not guaranteed.

i've read that the smtp protocal has no standard support for delivery
notifications, so you can't always count on it (i.e. mac server).

That's true. Well, to a certain extent. You can geta response that
the first mail server has accepted or rejected it, but any subsequent
mail servers are iffy. You'd find this info in the SMTP logs.

Jeff