Email not arriving or not being sent

In short: If a customer’s email does not come in as a ticket, or a reply is not delivered, the cause is almost always in one of a limited number of places: the forwarding or mailbox connection, the spam view, an incoming email rule or block, an expired connection with Outlook or Google, DNS records that were not found, a failed SMTP validation or a message that is too large. This article goes through those places in a logical order. If you cannot solve it, report it to the aishaa team with the ticket number and the time.

Where to find this

You do most checks under Organisation > Channels > Mail (the Current setup overview and, via Advanced settings, the management pages Outlook, Google and SMTP). The incoming email rules are under Account > Incoming email rules, the spam view under Tickets and the spam threshold in the account settings.

Who: from the Organisation admin role. Reconnecting or approving a Microsoft account and changing the spam threshold require the Account admin role. Any Agent can see sending errors on a message and fix them with Edit and send again. The checks apply per organisation; if you work with several organisations, choose the right organisation first.

Step 0: is the message in aishaa after all?

First check whether the message is perhaps there, but in a different place than you expect.

1. Filters in the ticket overview. In the filter panel of Tickets, turn off all filters and choose all organisations under Work scope (with several organisations). Also look at the Answered and Closed statuses. See The ticket overview: filtering, searching and sorting.
2. An existing ticket. A customer’s reply to an earlier email does not come in as a new ticket, but in the existing conversation, even if that ticket was already Closed (it then becomes Open again). Search for the customer’s email address or open the customer profile. See How aishaa links emails to the right conversation.
3. The spam view. Click the View spam button in the toolbar of the ticket overview. Emails above the spam threshold are here and not in the inbox. See step 3 below.
4. Another organisation. If your account has several organisations, each with its own mailbox or forwarding, the email may have come in at the other organisation.
5. Automatically closed. An incoming email rule with the action Automatically close does let the email in, but closes the ticket immediately. Filter on Closed and check the rules (step 4).

Incoming email is not arriving

Go through the steps in this order. Stop as soon as you have found the cause.

Step 1: the Current setup overview

Go to Organisation > Channels > Mail. If email has been set up, you see the Current setup box.

Then do the check the screen itself suggests: send a test email from another address to your support address and click Refresh. If Last received email changes to the time of your test email within a few minutes, receiving works and the problem lies with that one email (go to steps 3 and 4). If nothing changes, the problem lies with the route (step 2, 5 or 6).

The Current setup overview under Organisation > Channels > Mail with the Sending via line, the Last received email line with date and time, and the Refresh button.

Step 2: forwarding (own domain, SMTP or aishaa Mail only)

If you send via Own domain via aishaa, via an Own SMTP server or only via the aishaa Mail (built-in) address, aishaa receives customer email exclusively through forwarding from your mailbox to the aishaa Mail address. Check in the mailbox itself:

1. Is automatic forwarding still switched on? In Microsoft 365 it is under Settings → Mail → Forwarding, in Gmail under Settings → See all settings → Forwarding and POP/IMAP. A password change, a new admin or a security policy of your mail provider can switch forwarding off.
2. Does the forwarding point to the right address? Compare the address letter by letter with Your aishaa Mail address in the Current setup overview (use the copy button).
3. Did the email get stuck in your own spam folder? Most providers do not forward an email that your own mailbox marks as spam.
4. Send another test email and click Refresh.

More about forwarding in Your aishaa Mail address and forwarding. If you send via Outlook or Gmail, forwarding is not needed and you skip this step.

Step 3: the spam view and the spam threshold

Emails with a spam score above your account’s threshold do not go to the inbox, but to the spam view under Tickets. Replies to existing tickets and email from allowed senders always come in as normal.

1. Open the spam view via the View spam button in the toolbar of the ticket overview and look for the email by sender or subject.
2. If the email is there, open it and choose Process as ticket. If you are an Organisation admin or higher, first tick Always allow this sender from now on if this sender should never end up in the spam view again.
3. If legitimate email often ends up in the spam view, the threshold is set too low. An Account admin raises the SpamAssassin threshold in the account settings (slider from 0 to 30, default 10.0); a higher threshold lets more email through.

See Reviewing spam and Spam filter and allowed senders.

Step 4: incoming email rules and blocked addresses

Account > Incoming email rules holds rules that apply to all organisations of the account. A rule with the action Block makes sure a matching email does not arrive anywhere; a rule with Automatically close lets the email in, but closes the ticket immediately and aishaa does not analyse it.

1. Go through the rules and check whether a condition on Sender, Recipient or Subject (type Exact, Contains or Domain) matches the missing email. Pay particular attention to rules of the Domain type: they affect all addresses of a domain.
2. An email address that a colleague blocked from a ticket (Block {email address} in the customer card) is also listed here, as a rule with the action Block for the Sender (type Exact). Delete the rule to lift the block.
3. Then ask the customer to send the email again. A blocked email is not processed after the fact.

See Incoming email rules and Merge, move and block contacts.

Step 5: the Outlook connection

If you send and receive via Outlook, open Organisation > Channels > Mail > Manage Outlook (or Advanced settings > Providers > Manage Outlook). Check from top to bottom:

On the Advanced mail configuration page, the Outlook card shows the Action required or Warnings label with a short summary, for example Reconnect required for 1 mailbox(es).

The Outlook page with the Reconnect needed label and the Reconnect button next to the Microsoft account, and in the mailbox bindings table the Validation and Inbound columns.

See Connect Outlook or Microsoft 365.

Step 6: the Google connection

If you send and receive via Gmail, open Organisation > Channels > Mail > Manage Google (or Advanced settings > Providers > Manage Google). Check each mailbox:

See Connect Gmail or Google Workspace.

Step 7: email from a contact form comes in under the form’s name

If email from your website contact form does come in, but under the name of the form’s technical address (for example noreply@ or contact@) instead of the customer, a contact form sender is missing. See Contact form senders. Note: emails from addresses such as no-reply, do-not-reply, mailer-daemon or postmaster do come in, but aishaa does not create a proposal for them.

Outgoing email is not being sent

You recognise a reply that cannot be sent in two places: before sending in the composer, and after sending below the message in the conversation.

In the composer: the sending route is blocked

Below the editor is the sending route with Send via and Send to. If aishaa cannot send, the Send button is disabled and a notice explains why. The main notices:

If you are an Organisation admin, a block also shows Please contact your administrator to reconnect or fix the channel configuration. See Replying to a ticket and Advanced: endpoints, sending methods and routing rules.

Below the message: sending errors

If a reply was sent but not delivered, a red notice appears below the message in the conversation. The ticket’s timeline then also shows Sending the reply to the customer failed with the reason. There are four kinds:

Below the notice is the Edit and send again button. It puts the text and attachments of the failed message back in the composer, so you can adjust it and send it again. The failed message then gets the Cancelled label in the conversation, so it is clear that it has been replaced. The button only appears on replies from colleagues, not on automatic replies.

A sent message in a ticket’s conversation with, below it in red, the notice Not delivered: the email connection needs attention from an administrator. and the Edit and send again button.

If it instead says Delivery unconfirmed in orange, aishaa could not establish whether the mail server accepted the message. Do not simply send the message again, because the customer may already have received it. Check with the customer or report it to the aishaa team with the ticket number.

The message was sent, but the customer received nothing

If the message was sent via aishaa Mail (built-in) or Own domain via aishaa, aishaa shows below the message what happened after sending:

With Outlook, Gmail and your own SMTP server, aishaa does not show a delivery status below the message. A bounce notice from the mail server then comes in as a normal email, usually as a ticket from a sender such as mailer-daemon or postmaster; aishaa does not create a proposal for it.

Sending via your own domain: DNS records not found

With the Own domain via aishaa route, aishaa can only send as long as both DNS records (the TXT record and the CNAME record) have the status Verified. Open Organisation > Channels > Mail and look at the table of records:

• Not found yet: the record is not (or no longer) in your domain’s DNS. Add it again at your domain provider. This happens, for example, after moving the domain or cleaning up DNS records.
• Found, but the value differs: there is a record with this name, but with different content. Compare it with We found: and correct the value. Copy the value; never retype it.
• Click Check now. DNS changes can take up to an hour.

Then test with Send test email in the Send a test email block. See Send from your own domain via aishaa.

Sending via your own SMTP server: validation failed

Open Advanced settings > Providers > SMTP and click Validate next to the connection.

• If you see SMTP validation failed: with an error message, check SMTP host, Port, Security (STARTTLS, SSL/TLS or None), Username and Password with Edit. A changed mailbox password is the most common cause; the password in aishaa does not change along with it.
• Check that the Enabled switch is on.
• On the Advanced mail configuration page, the SMTP card shows the Warnings label with One or more SMTP connections have validation errors as long as an enabled connection has a validation error.

See Send via your own SMTP server.

The message is too large

Before sending, aishaa calculates how large the message will be and shows this in the composer under Estimated message size with the limit of the sending method. Large images in the message are automatically reduced and attachments that do not fit are sent as a download link. If the message still does not fit, you see This message is too large to send. Remove content or send fewer files. and aishaa blocks sending.

• Switch off Also send the originals in full quality if it is on.
• Remove attachments or send them in a second message.
• The limits per route: 25 MB via Gmail, 10 MB for aishaa Mail (built-in), Own domain via aishaa and Outlook, and with your own SMTP server the configured Maximum message size (MB) (1 to 150 MB, otherwise 10 MB). See Sending limits and image optimisation.

The message is still in the send delay

If you have set a Send delay in My profile, aishaa waits 5, 10, 30 or 60 seconds after Send. During that time the Sent pop-up with a countdown bar appears at the bottom right. If you click Undo, the message is not sent and the text returns to the composer. See Sending, undoing and what happens when sending fails.

Contacting the aishaa team

Have you gone through all the steps and the email still does not arrive, or the reply still is not being sent? Then contact the aishaa team via the aishaa support chat in aishaa (menu Chat, conversation aishaa support) or via support@aishaa.nl. Include:

• the ticket number (for a reply that is not being sent) or the customer’s email address and the subject (for an email that does not come in);
• the organisation concerned;
• the time the email was sent, as precisely as possible;
• the route under Sending via and the notice you saw, word for word or as a screenshot by email.

See Contact support.

Good to know

• The aishaa Mail address always keeps receiving, whichever route you have chosen. As an emergency solution you can temporarily give that address directly to a customer.
• An email that was blocked by an incoming email rule or held back by the spam filter is never processed as a normal ticket. After a block is lifted, the email does not come in after the fact; ask the customer to send it again. From the spam view, however, you can still process an email as a ticket.
• A reply that aishaa sends via your own domain or via an SMTP server is stored in aishaa and not in the Sent Items folder of your mailbox. That is not an error.
• An email you send yourselves from the forwarded mailbox (outside aishaa) does not come into aishaa; forwarding only applies to incoming email.
• aishaa does not delay incoming email; a push notification about a new email does, however, deliberately arrive 25 seconds later, so that a quick follow-up message does not ping twice.

Related

• Email setup: the options at a glance
• Your aishaa Mail address and forwarding
• Connect Outlook or Microsoft 365
• Connect Gmail or Google Workspace
• Send from your own domain via aishaa
• Send via your own SMTP server
• Advanced: endpoints, sending methods and routing rules
• Incoming email rules
• Spam filter and allowed senders
• Reviewing spam
• How aishaa links emails to the right conversation
• Sending limits and image optimisation
• Replying to a ticket
• Contact support