Outbound Email ‘Send-Failed’: Recipient Turns Into <false> – How to Fix?
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07-24-2025 12:47 AM
I’m working on my company’s developer instance provided by ServiceNow and I’m having trouble with outbound email notifications.
We’re using the ServiceNow-managed SMTP relay, which sends emails using the @Service-Now.com domain. I’ve tried triggering notifications in multiple ways, and while they initially generate correctly (with the send-ready state), they always end up in send-failed.
When I inspect the email headers, I see:
To: false
Even though the Recipients field is populated. The error message is:
Invalid Addresses
504 5.5.2 <false>: Recipient address rejected: need fully-qualified address
I’ve tried:
- Sending to fully qualified company emails, as well as Gmail and Hotmail — same result.
- Sending to users who are registered in the sys_user table.
- Verifying that the Notification Device (cmn_notif_device) is active and configured with the user’s email.
No matter what I try, the recipient becomes <false> when the email actually sends, and the email fails.
Goal:
I need to send email notifications to:
- Users not registered in sys_user (external recipients), and
- Users who are registered (internal), without the email failing.
Has anyone seen the To: false / <false> recipient issue before?
What could be causing ServiceNow to drop or replace the recipient, and how can I fix or work around this?