Reader email delivery issues

KnowledgeOwl generally sends three possible emails to readers:

• Welcome email: Sent when a reader is given access to a new knowledge base
• Password reset email: Sent when a reader requests a password reset or an admin initiates a password reset for the reader
• Optional: Subscription emails

Welcome and password reset emails go through our email provider; subscription emails go through your own SMTP.

If we have trouble sending the welcome and password reset emails for any reason, a red notification dot appears over the notification bell in the site banner:

If you click on the notification bell icon, a message that your account has email delivery problems will appear:

Sample email delivery problem notification when expanded

Click the hyperlinked email delivery problems text to open a pop-up that tells you what delivery issues there are.

When reader email addresses have issues, we'll provide a list of the reader(s) impacted by the issues. Click the Resolve link next to each reader's name to jump straight to their details to try to troubleshoot what's going on.

Sample reader issue message in pop-up

Any readers with email issues will also display a red envelope next to their name in the Readers page: Sample email delivery issue icon in the reader list When you view the details for a reader who has email delivery issues, a warning message displays above their email address. This message varies based on what's going on with the reader. There are two basic scenarios you might see:

1. Email has issues but wasn't added to our suppression list
2. Email has issues and was added to our email suppression list: if this is the case, you'll see a green Remove button in the warning.

We'll walk through each scenario in more detail below:

Email has issues/not in suppression list

Email issues can crop up for any number of reasons, like migrating an email server, a temporarily full mailbox, and more. Many of these issues won't result in an email being added to the email suppression list. Some of them may resolve on their own; others may need explicit troubleshooting to resolve.

When the email hasn't been added to the email suppression list, the reader's warning will look a bit like this:

Sample reader warning without suppression list; details of the delivery problem will vary

The information provided here is intended to help you troubleshoot what's going on with the reader's email address:

1. If readers are internal to your organization, verify that the reader's email address is properly spelled. (You'd be amazed how often this is an issue for new reader accounts!)
2. Try sending an email to that address and see if you get a bounce/undeliverable message.
   • If you don't get a bounce, the issue may have already resolved itself, and you can proceed with the next step.
   • If you do get a bounce, the issue still requires troubleshooting. We recommend reaching out to you or your reader's email administrator with the delivery error message to expedite resolution.
   • If your knowledge base allows Reader signups and this looks like a bad/bogus signup, consider deleting the reader account. No further troubleshooting is necessary if you delete the reader.
3. Once it seems like the reader's email can properly receive emails, click the Clear this Warning button to clear the warning and remove the banner from your site. The warning will reopen if we continue to experience any issues emailing this reader.

Email has issues and is in the suppression list

If an email address has had delivery problems and the address appears invalid, nonexistent, or misconfigured, it will also automatically be added to our mail provider's suppression list.

In these cases, even if the email address's underlying issue was resolved, KnowledgeOwl won't send any emails to the address until you remove it from the suppression list.

When the email has been added to the email suppression list, the reader's warning will look a bit like this:

Sample reader warning message with suppression list Remove button

1. Our mail delivery provider captures the error code or message when email delivery fails. We'll display this back to you here. You can use this to help troubleshoot what's going on:
   1. If readers are internal to your organization, verify that the reader's email address is properly spelled. (You'd be amazed how often this is an issue for new reader accounts!)
   2. Try sending an email to that address and see if you get a bounce/undeliverable message.
      • If you don't get a bounce, the issue may have already resolved itself, and you can proceed with the next step.
      • If you do get a bounce, the issue still requires troubleshooting. We recommend reaching out to you or your reader's email administrator with the delivery error message to expedite resolution.
   3. If your knowledge base allows Reader signups and this looks like a bad/bogus signup, consider deleting the reader account. No further troubleshooting is necessary if you delete a reader.
2. Once it seems like the reader's email can properly receive emails, click the Remove button. This will:
   1. Remove the email address from our suppression list.
   2. Clear the warning from the reader's details.
   3. Remove the warning banner from within KnowledgeOwl.

The warning will reopen if we continue to experience any issues emailing this reader.