Defining when to send transfer and delivery Delay reports

You can define the amount of time a pending message can reside in the router's message queue before a Delay report is sent to the author of the undelivered message. This applies to all pending messages on any server on which you have enabled transfer and delivery Delay reports.

About this task

For normal or high priority mail, Notes® users typically expect that messages are delivered within a few hours of the time they are sent. The sender of a message needs to know if a message is not delivered. Enable the transfer and delivery delay notifications feature on the Server Configuration > Router/SMTP > Restrictions and Controls > Transfer Controls tab.

A Delay report is sent to a message author when a pending message has been in the router's main message queue longer than the time specified in the Configuration Settings document. Delays are commonly caused when a transfer destination server is unavailable due to server or network issues. Messages that are pending for local delivery while in a state of "in retry," can also cause a Delay report to be sent. Delay reports are also sent for SMTP mail for which per-recipient delivery status notification (DSN) request information is not supplied or for SMTP mail for which Delay reports are requested.

The router checks for transfer and delivery delays at the same time that it checks for message expiration; therefore, Delay reports are not sent in exact accordance with the specified delay interval. The router checks for message expiration according to the interval defined in the field Expired message purge interval in the router's Server Configuration document on the Transfer Controls tab.

Note: If the router is shutdown or paused, the main message queue entries are discarded. Entries are reloaded when the router restarts or resumes. This causes a loss of in memory state information about whether a Delay report has been sent and can result in more than one Delay report being sent for the same message.

Mail that is in a dead or held state in MAIL.BOX is not pending mail. The router makes no attempt to transfer or deliver dead or held mail; therefore, Delay reports are not sent for dead or held mail. When a dead or held message is released by the administrator, the message is no longer in a held or dead state. The start time for calculating when to send a Delay report is the time that the router sees this new released version of the message. By default, only one Delay report is sent per message and recipient after the message is queued for four hours. This is also true if another entity, such as a third party anti-spam or anti-virus add-in, updates the message to change its state.

If the router is not running, either due to the task being shutdown or the server being down, no Delay reports for messages in that server's MAIL.BOX are sent. When the router starts, each entry is assigned a start time from which to calculate the delay. The start time is the time the router creates a main message queue entry for that message. For example, if the server is down for five hours, the pending time would be zero (0) on restart, and a Delay report would not be sent for another four hours.

Delay reports are not sent for the following scenarios:

  • The intended recipient and message have another delivery status notification (DSN) (success, failure, relay or delay report).
  • The SMTPOriginator is <>.
  • The intended recipient is also the sender.
  • The message is a Trace report.
  • The message is a Return Receipt.
  • The DeliveryReport setting on the delayed message is set to N.
  • The SMTP client specifically requests only a Failure report, a Success report, or none.
  • The Delivery Status Report item on the delayed message exists and is set to any string that does not contain a D. For example, N for never, or SF for success and failure reports.

Setting low priority time range delay notifications

About this task

There are two types of delay notifications:

  • Low priority time range delay notifications
  • Transfer and delivery delay notifications

If low priority mail is enabled, and a message is sent low priority and is delayed due to low priority time-range, the configuration settings for low priority time range delay notifications apply.

The clock does not start for a transfer delay notification until the low priority time range has been reached. If the message cannot be routed during the low priority time range, and if a low priority time range notification was not already sent for the message, a transfer delay notification is sent after the specified interval. If the low priority delay notification interval is larger than the low priority time range, no message delay notification is sent.

If the NOTES.INI setting RouterDelayNotifyEachInterval is enabled and the transfer delay notification interval for low priority mail is less than the low priority time range, a Delay report may be sent during low priority time range. If the time interval has not been reached when the low priority time range expires, a Delay report is not sent. The router stops attempting transfer; therefore, any notification that states the message is being retried is an incorrect notification.

If low priority mail is disabled due to the NOTES.INI file setting MailDisablePriority, and transfer and delivery delay notifications are enabled, and when the low priority message exceeds the configured delay interval for low priority mail, a Delay report is issued. The clock starts immediately, not waiting until the low priority time range.

When you enable the transfer and delivery delay feature, a Delay report is sent to the author of any pending messages that are not transferred or delivered within a specified amount of time.

Procedure

  1. Make sure you already have a Configuration Settings document for the server(s) to be configured.
  2. From the Domino® Administrator, click the Configuration tab and expand the Messaging section.
  3. Click Configurations.
  4. Select the Configuration Settings document for the mail server or servers you want to administer, and click Edit Configuration.
  5. Click the Router/SMTP > Restrictions and Controls > Transfer Controls tab.
  6. In the Transfer and Delivery Delay notifications field, click Enabled.
  7. Specify the amount of time that a high, normal, and low priority message should reside in the message queue before the router sends a Delay report to the author of the message. The default for each priority is four (4) hours. Specify the amount of time in hours or minutes.
    Note: For low priority mail, the clock does not start until the low priority time range begins. If this time interval is longer than the low priority time range, Delay Reports are not sent.
  8. Click Save and Close.