This article covers the Outgoing Email Server Settings that DeskManager Online requires before anyone can compose a customer email from a deal, a vehicle or a document list, and what happens when your mail server rejects a message you tried to send. Both come down to the same setup screens under Settings > Organization.
Questions this answers
- "The Email button on a deal is grayed out or errors out for one of my new hires - what's the fix?"
- "I hit send on a customer email and got a red error message on screen - is it going to retry automatically or did it just not send?"
This article is only about outgoing email server setup and failed customer email sends. If the email went out but a merge field printed blank, or a footer did not attach, see the article on merge fields and header and footer templates.
What has to be set up before anyone can compose
DeskManager Online sends customer email through your own mail server. There is no shared or built-in sending service to fall back on. Before a user can compose, one of these two must be complete:
- Outgoing email settings for the lot, set at Settings > Organization > Lots. These cover everyone working in that lot.
- Outgoing email settings for that individual user, set at Settings > Organization > Users. These cover only that person.
"Complete" means all of the following are filled in on the Email Server Setup screen: the mail service, the domain name and port, the SSL setting, the user name, the password, and the address the mail comes from. It also means the settings have been verified.
The verification step is the one people miss
Saving the email server settings does not finish the job. The system emails a security code to the address you entered and asks you to type it back in. Until that code is entered, the settings count as incomplete and sending stays blocked.
Just as important: changing any of those settings clears the verification and sends a fresh code. So a store that has been emailing fine for a year can stop dead the day someone edits the password or the port and closes the window without entering the new code.
User-level settings have to be switched on
On a user's email server setup there is a checkbox, Enable User Outgoing Email Settings, described on screen as overriding the lot settings where possible. If that box is not ticked, the person's own settings are ignored entirely and the lot's settings are used instead. If the box is not ticked and there are no lot settings, that user cannot send.
What the blocked user actually sees
It is not always an obvious grey button. What you see depends on where you click:
- On a deal, next to the buyer or co-buyer: when settings are complete the email address is a link that opens the composer. When they are not, the same address turns into an ordinary mail link that just opens whatever email program is installed on that computer. Nothing tells the user why.
- On document and letter screens: clicking to compose or to email a document shows a warning instead of opening the composer.
- Opening a new email directly: you land on a message page rather than the composer.
The warning and the message page both name the signed-in user and say that user does not have any outgoing email server settings configured for their user or this lot, with links straight to the lot setup screen and to that user's setup screen.
This is checked per signed-in person, which is why one new hire can be blocked while everyone else is fine. That pattern almost always means your dealership never set up email at the lot level and instead set each person up individually, so the new hire simply has not been done yet. Setting it up once on the lot fixes it for everybody at once.
When the send itself fails
If the composer opens and you hit send, but your mail server rejects the message, you get an on-screen error. The text you see is whatever your mail server said, passed through unchanged, plus a message that there was an error and your email message could not be sent.
The message is not queued and it is not retried. Nothing further happens in the background. If you walk away, the customer never gets it. You have to fix the cause and send it again yourself.
How to tell whether it left at all
A successful send does two things: it stores the sent message so it can be reopened later, and it writes an entry on the record's communication log with the subject line. A failed send does neither.
So the check is simple. Open the deal, vehicle or customer the email was sent from and look at its communication log. If there is no entry for that subject, the message did not go out, no matter what you saw on screen.
Common causes of a rejected send
- The mail account's password was changed, or the provider now requires an app-specific password rather than the normal one.
- The mail provider blocked the sign-in as suspicious and is waiting for someone to approve it.
- The port or the SSL setting does not match what the provider expects.
- A recipient address is mistyped or no longer exists.
- The attachments are larger than the provider allows.
After correcting anything on the Email Server Setup screen, remember that you will be sent a new security code and must enter it before sending will work again.
When to contact support
Contact support if the settings are complete and verified, the error text from your mail server does not point at a cause you can act on, or the same message fails repeatedly from every user at the store.
Comments
0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.