Email FAQs and troubleshooting notification emails

  • Release version: Washingtondc
  • Updated February 1, 2024
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Email FAQs and Troubleshooting Notification Emails

    This guide provides essential information for ServiceNow customers regarding the troubleshooting of notification emails, including how to check logs and diagnostics to ensure successful email delivery and identify any issues. Understanding these processes is crucial for maintaining efficient communication through the ServiceNow platform.

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    Key Features

    • Logs and Diagnostics: Tools to monitor email sending and receiving status, identifying issues, and determining the recipients of emails.
    • Log Checking Scenarios: Specific logs to check based on the email status, including the Sent System Mailbox, Failed System Mailbox, and individual message logs.
    • Email FAQs and Resources: Access to knowledge base articles for troubleshooting inbound and outbound email issues, including specific error scenarios and solutions.

    Key Outcomes

    By utilizing logs and diagnostics, customers can effectively troubleshoot email issues, ensuring that notification emails are sent and received correctly. Understanding how to navigate the system email log and the associated message logs empowers customers to resolve problems efficiently, leading to improved communication and operational effectiveness within their ServiceNow environment.

    Logs and diagnostics are provided to help determine whether notification emails are being sent and received successfully, what any issues are, and who receives the email.

    Diagnostics help monitor the overall health of the system and troubleshoot general problems, such as not receiving any incoming mail. Logs help identify problems with individual emails, and different logs are useful for diagnosing different types of problems.

    Log checking scenarios

    Problem Log
    Need to check whether an individual notification email was successfully sent Check the Sent System Mailbox for that email. Also check the Failed System Mailbox for failure notifications.
    Individual email failed
    • Check the message log of the individual email.

    • Check the Error string field of the email record.

      Warning:
      Some email servers do not return error strings
    Email not received by end user
    • Check the Junk System Mailbox for notifications about returned emails. These emails also appear in the Emails log with a Type of received-ignored.

    • Check the Error string field of the email record.

      Warning:
      Some email servers do not return error strings
    • Check the message log of the individual email for the reasons different recipients were included or excluded.

    Email FAQs

    Troubleshooting resources

    See the following resources on troubleshooting inbound and outbound email problems.

    Error or symptom Solution
    Inbound Email FAQ See KB0957760.
    Instance not receiving inbound email See Inbound email troubleshooting, ServiceNow KB0524472 and KB0520595. These KB articles also provide links to a video series on troubleshooting inbound emails.
    Instance not sending outbound email See Troubleshooting Outbound email, ServiceNow KB0521382. This KB article also provides links to a video series on troubleshooting outbound emails.
    Email from Outlook produces an empty Incident record containing an attachment named winmail.dat. Configure the local Outlook client or Exchange server not to send Rich Text formatted (RTF) data to the instance.
    Emails are getting set to type send-ignored for no obvious reason See KB0790932.
    Duplicate emails generated by the instance See Troubleshooting duplicate emails generated by the instance, KB0529413.
    SMTP Sender Job Stuck See SMTP Sender Job Stuck > 30 Mins alert, KB0755061.
    Connection to smtp.office365.com failed See KB0825391.
    IMAP with OAuth error AUTHENTICATE failed See KB0963959.
    Error connecting the POP email account on secure port See KB0829289.
    Inbound email processing is stuck alerts See KB0855277.
    Email Reader / SMTP Sender job stuck See KB0679998.
    Email Reader Job stuck/running for more than 2 hours alerts See KB0755063.