Zimbra equivalent of "Outbox"

[cjm51213]

Hi Folks,

(ZCS 7) This weekend I received a message telling me that a message I "sent" on Wednesday had timed out and was not delivered. I was unaware that it had not yet been delivered and was still pending. This is normally expressed in mail clients with an "outbox" which lists all such pending messages.

Where it the zimbra equivalent of the "outbox"? How do I find such pending messages?

Thanks for the help,

Chris.

[chauvetp]

There is no such folder. Even if you were using Outlook that wouldn't have had this message there.

The 'Outbox' folder is for when messages are pending from your client to the mail server. When you're using the Zimbra web interface you're communicating with the server already - no outbox is needed.

What you experienced was a delay in your mail server sending to another mail server (or possibly two servers down the line with issues delivering between each other). If you were using Outlook, the message would have left the 'Outbox' and as far as the client is concerned, it would have been sent. Messages that Zimbra has not yet delivered to another SMTP server are visible to administrators only. They are in the Mail Queues section of the Zimbra Administrator GUI.

[cjm51213]

Hi Paul,

Your description agrees with my experience.

• If a message is undelivered "mid-stream", then I receive a "Your message has not been delivered ... Will keep trying." message, which generally appears within four hours and there would be no artifact in the "outbox".
• If a message is undelivered by my mail-server, I would expect the message to appear in an "outbox", and in Outlook, I believe it does, which is how I learn about incomplete transmissions. Since I got no "Your message has not been delivered.." message, then I conclude that the message was never committed to the care of another mail-server. meaning it was never dispatched from my zimbra system, and a check of the mail queue confirms this to be the case.

If I understand what you are telling me, then users cannot tell if they have messages pending delivery; only administrators can determine if any messages are pending delivery? I don't doubt that you fully understand the problem and that you are telling me the truth of the situation, so recognize that I am not criticizing you, your assistance, nor your understanding of zimbra when I say, "Are you $%^ kidding me???" (-:

In this case, it is a simple user error; "Verizon.net" was misspelled as "Verison.net", but the user (me!) didn't learn about this for four days. This can't really be the intended behavior; there must be a mechanism available to users to detect exactly this sort of thing...

Thanks for the help,

Chris.

[chauvetp]

All I can say Chris is that in my experience there is no other email client which will do more than that. If the mail server accepts the message it will leave the Outbox. Even if the mail server cannot then deliver it to the next server along the line, it will still be out of the Outbox.

If you were in Outlook sending a message it would only stay in the Outbox if:

• Outlook could not connect to your SMTP/Exchange server
• You had a syntax error in an address
• You have a bad local address (not remote address)

With the verizon.com vs verison.com issue, Outlook/Exchange would have done the same as Zimbra. The server would have accepted the message from the client. The server would find the message undeliverable and would eventually bounce it back to the sender (after timing out for the normal retry period since verison.net actually exists and doesn't give a 5xx error when trying to send mail there).

[chauvetp]

There is an option in Postifx which does set the user to be notified sooner when there is a delay in sending their message:
Postfix Configuration Parameters

I haven't set it myself but the following will set it to 4 hours as the Zimbra user (though you will have to restart Zimbra or at least postfix after this:
postconf -e 'delay_warning_time = 4h'

[cjm51213]

Hi Paul,

Thanks very much. My system was set to 0h, which I think is a very long time. I entered a reasonable setting, and this problem is solved as was as can be expected.

Thanks for the help,

Chris.