Overview

“Why didn’t I receive a notification via email?”

This question can be tricky to answer because so many things could go wrong:

• The email address was entered incorrectly and contains a typo;

• An error occurred between LearningBuilder and its outbound email service;

• An error occurred on the destination email service;

• The destination email service rejected the email (e.g. account closed or unknown);

• The user’s spam filter moved the email to a hidden folder in their inbox;

The “Email Delivery Tracking” feature helps Administrators and Practitioners answer this question by displaying detailed information about an individual email message. Specifically, the feature tracks:

• The date/time when the message was initially created (“queued”)

• The date/time when the message was handed off to LearningBuilder’s email service (“sent”)

• The date/time when the message was delivered to the recipient’s email service (“delivered”)

• The date/time when the message was first opened by the recipient (“email opened”)¹

• The date/time when the message was first viewed within LearningBuilder (“viewed online”)

Configuring Email Delivery Tracking

Delivery tracking must be enabled and configured by a Sys Admin. If you have the necessary permissions, you can view the instructions here: https://heuristicsolutions.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DOCS/pages/1775632391

How does it work?

When a message is delivered through SendGrid, and tracking is enabled, a LearningBuilder message ID is passed along as well. SendGrid associates this ID with that message.

Whenever SendGrid records an event for that message (delivered, opened, bounced, etc), it sends a message back into LearningBuilder containing the event details and the internal message ID. LearningBuilder uses this status callback to track the message as it moves between Queued → Delivered to SendGrid → Delivered to recipient inbox → Opened by the recipient

The status information is displayed in two ways:

• The most recent status event is displayed on the My Account → Communications page

• The full tracking details are available by clicking on an icon on that page

Open

The “tracking beacon”

Delivery events are all tracked by SendGrid as the message makes its way to the destination mail server. These events are reliably reported to LearningBuilder, as long as the system is properly configured to accept them.

Open events, such as tracking when the recipient actually viewed a delivered message, are less reliable. The industry standard way to track these events is to include a “beacon”, such as a link to a tiny image hosted by SendGrid, in the body of the email. When the email is opened, the browser or email program requests the image from SendGrid, and this is used to indicate that the email was opened.

This process can be interrupted in a few different ways:

• Some email services will suppress requests for tracking beacons as a privacy or security feature

• Some internet routers will cache the beacon image

In both cases, the request for the tracking beacon never reaches SendGrid, and the “message opened” event will never be recorded.

Reporting

The https://heuristicsolutions.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LBDEV/pages/1002897647 view (vRPT_MessageQueue) includes details such as:

• Delivery status

• Who has read the email

• How long after delivery was the email read

• Whether the user has logged in since the email was sent

• etc.

Refer to https://heuristicsolutions.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LBDEV/pages/1002897647 for a complete list fields and their definitions. The sample Message Queue report has some of these new attributes already added.

Identifying profiles w/ problematic email addresses

In addition to tracking individual message status, the tracking system will also identify member profiles for which the most recent message bounced.

This information appears in the Email Address section of the Account Profile page. An alert icon appears if the most recent message sent to each address bounced.