Inconsistent PM email notifications

Flopsy · August 22, 2024, 12:13:48 AM

I'm averaging about 4 PMs a day on average at the moment and I usually rely on the email notifications sent to my email account to tell me when I receive them since I don't check the forums very often. It is also really helpful to read the PM in the email notification too.

Lately however, sometimes I get the email notification and sometimes I don't. And sometimes I have logged onto the forums to find nearly 5 PMs I wasn't emailed about.
I realise this is probably a problem with the forums host provider and it's probably not going to get resolved easily but I'm just posting to see if this is happening to other people who receive email notifications on forum Private Messages?

namida · August 23, 2024, 09:46:22 AM

Just to rule some things out first:
- Did you check your Spam folder?
- Did you check the inbox of the email address your forum account is registered with, or does that forward to another email which you check? If the latter, are the emails there if you log into the email associated with your forum account?

Assuming that doesn't answer anything, some questions that might help me start in the right direction / track down the issue:
- Were these multiple PMs in a row from the same user, or from different users?
- At the time you received the PM for which the notification didn't arrive, did you have unread PMs? (I realise the wording of the option is "Always", but I'm wondering if SMF has some not-clearly-documented rule as to when it will or won't send one.)
- Can you provide the times of some PMs - specifically, a PM you did not receive a notification for, and the closest ones both before and after it that you did receive one for?

I'll likely have to do some testing / source-code-examining to figure this out. A quick check with both the forum error logs, and SendGrid bounce logs (SendGrid is the service used for sending emails from the site), don't reveal anything that sheds light on what's happening here.

Flopsy · August 23, 2024, 04:53:16 PM

Turns out the forums are innocent, it was my email client sending the missing messages to my spam folder. I found it bizarre that some messages got sent there but not others. Oh well

namida · August 23, 2024, 07:36:43 PM

SendGrid is often used for newsletters etc, so if you've been marking these as Spam, that might explain it. At any rate, if you mark a few LF ones as Not Spam, GMail should quickly learn that you don't consider them spam.

Flopsy · September 27, 2024, 06:48:33 PM

I have not been receiving email notifications again for forum PMs and I haven't received one since 7th September at 6:52am my time.

My next received PM on 8th Sept at 4pm my time and any PMs after that did not receive any notifications.

I have checked spam folders this time and the emails were never there.

I'm not sure if that co-incides with the forum being upgraded to its current form.

namida · September 28, 2024, 04:37:52 AM

I'll take a look later tonight or tomorrow and see if I can see anything.

Has anyone else had similar issues?

kaywhyn · September 28, 2024, 05:08:57 AM

Quote from: namida on September 28, 2024, 04:37:52 AMHas anyone else had similar issues?

I used to once the Forums switched to the new software, but not anymore. I think what fixed the problem for me was to enable both email options under the "Personal Messages" when you click your profile at the top of the LF site and go to "Notifications." In my case, I think I had the "When I receive a new personal message" already enabled when the site transferred to the new software, but the other one, "When I receive a reply to a personal message" wasn't. That was when Strato replied to my PM on September 9, for which I didn't receive an email notification for. Once I enabled the second one, I haven't had issues with getting email notifications for PMs since.

I do kind of miss the pop-up window that you get on the LF site when you refreshed the site or navigated somewhere else on the site which said something like "You have received a new PM. Would you like to view it now?" or something like that and when you click to view it a new tab would open. Unless those pop-ups still happen and it's just not functioning correctly?

Both alerts options are enabled under Personal Messages on my profile, but this one seems to just be a number counter appearing on "My Messages" at the top of the LF site, so maybe that's the replacement for the pop-up window now? Of course, if you happen to miss the appearance of the number counter on the "My Messages" tab (for example, you weren't at the top of the site when you refreshed the page), then there's the email notification to let you know instead, if that's working.

Simon · September 28, 2024, 06:25:47 AM

I haven't gotten emails per PM either. Presumably this is so since SMF 2.1; I'd have to investigate exact times.

On LF homepage, I get a popup for new PMs. I.e., kaywhyn's bug about the missing popup doesn't reproduce here.

-- Simon

namida · September 28, 2024, 07:34:05 AM

I just sent Flopsy a test PM to see what happens and can confirm that the site at least tried to send him an email - will need to wait to hear from Flopsy on whether he received it or not; and will need to wait a while (there's a bit of a lag in reporting, I think) to see if/what anything happend in SendGrid.

I also sent myself a PM from the test account, for which I received a notification email.

One thing I would suggest to everyone is to check their notification settings here: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?action=profile;area=notification;sa=alerts
It's possible (even if they look correct on that page) that they didn't get carried over correctly from SMF 2.0.19 to 2.1.4. If you're having issues, double-check that page (if you haven't already done so since the upgrade) and even if they look correct, hit "save".

This isn't likely to help Flopsy if he didn't receive the notification from my test PM (as I can confirm the site tried to send it), but it might help Simon or anyone else who's having issues.

EDIT: SendGrid logs are now showing the email, and saying it was delivered successfully.

Flopsy · September 28, 2024, 10:41:58 AM

I did receive the email notification and there wasn't a delay. It came through at the time the PM was sent. Thank you

kaywhyn · September 29, 2024, 10:15:42 PM

Quote from: Simon on September 28, 2024, 06:25:47 AMOn LF homepage, I get a popup for new PMs. I.e., kaywhyn's bug about the missing popup doesn't reproduce here.

Ok, thanks. I had a feeling that it still works with the new software but that it's not working for me for whatever reason. I got a PM from Strato this morning and once again I didn't get the pop-up window on the LF site notifying me of one even though I have the setting/preference enabled in my profile. I did get the email notification, though, and that's been working for me ever since I checked both email options for PMs from a few weeks ago.

Weird the emails haven't worked for you.

edit: Checked permissions in Firefox and I have it set to allow permissions for pop-ups on the LF site. Anything else to check?

Flopsy · October 02, 2024, 11:02:07 PM

Sorry but the email notifications are now not working yet again. In fact the only time I got notified was when you sent that test message and then all subsequent PMs since then got no notification whatsoever.

namida · October 04, 2024, 01:29:05 AM

That's weird. Are the affected PMs all from the same user or multiple different ones?

Flopsy · October 04, 2024, 03:51:11 AM

I've had PMs from two different users in that timeframe.

namida · October 04, 2024, 07:16:37 PM

Really stumped on this one. Checking SendGrid logs, multiple PM notification emails appear to have been sent over the last few days, but none to you (not even marked as failed to send; there's just nothing with you as the recipient).

Just wondering, did the PMs have attachments? Or is it possible the user is sending them with you as BCC rather than To? (Although I'd think it very weird that two different users are doing this.) You did receive the one when I PM'd you, so it isn't a matter of wrong email address or anything like that. But I am wondering if perhaps the bug relates to either the sender, or specific aspects of the PM, in some way. Nothing shows up in error logs suggesting that an email failed to send.

One other thing that crosses my mind is - did you have the site open at the time? Maybe SMF 2.1 doesn't send the email if you're already logged in anyway.