Setting up message recall

Message recall provides Notes® client users with the ability to recall mail messages after they are sent. This feature is useful when a Notes® client user has accidentally clicked Send and then needs to retract the message in order to complete or modify the message content.

When the original message author recalls a message, a recall request is sent to the original recipients' mail servers. The router processes the recall request and then, if allowed to do so, deletes the original message. Messages are deleted from servers in the same domain or from a domain other than the domain from which the original message was sent. If the message sender has enabled the setting to receive a status report, the router then sends a status report to the originator of the message. By default, when a message is recalled, a report is sent to the originator of the message. The message is recalled using the server ID of the server performing the recall.

Use the field Do not allow recall of messages older than on the Mail Policy Settings document to define the time period during which a message may be recalled after the date of delivery.

You can define the state in which a message can exist when it is recalled. For example, you define whether only unread messages can be recalled, or whether both read and unread messages can be recalled. Specify the number of weeks, days, hours, or minutes according to the unit of time you want to use.

You can control and apply message recall settings using a mail policy settings document or a Server Configuration document. If there is no policy in place, the values in the Server Configuration document are used to establish the message recall settings. If those message recall fields on the Server Configuration document do not contain values, the default settings are used.

The message recall feature applies only to Domino® servers, and only to mail messages not routed over SMTP servers.

Recall Reports

The Recall Response form gathers the information from the recall responses that are returned by the mail servers and then presents the information in a report. The report contains this information:

  • The recall request time and date
  • The number of responses received to date
  • A document link to the original message in the Sent folder
  • A table of summary data that is computed for display. For each response received, the summary contains the intended recipient name, recall request status, server name, and if appropriate, a failure reason or the message status.

If a recipient's mail server does not support the Message Recall feature because the server is a pre-Domino 8 server, the requester receives a Mail Trace Report from the mail server instead of a Recall Report.