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Troubleshooting SMS alerts

Document #:10361

Applies To:

MailSite (SMS Alerts) 7.x

Synopsis:

MailSite Version 7 allows users to configure their email account such that SMS notifications are sent to their cell phones upon a receipt of new email.

The SMS notification will contain information pertaining to the Sender and the Subject. If the original email is in plain text format then a small portion of the email body may also be included*. If the original email is encoded in any non plain text format, then only the From and Subject fields will be seen.*

With the use of MailSite logs, administrators can quickly troubleshoot any reported problems with SMS notifications.

*Subject to SMS character limitations

More Information:

The end user is responsible for assigning the correct cell phone number and network provider within their account. This can be done via MailSite Express, click on the Wireless link on the left hand side.

If you do not see the Wireless option present within Express, then check that you are running MailSite Express Version 7 (or later) and also examine the expresscfg.asp file. Items 11.12, 11.13 & 11.14 will give you the options to expose the Wireless options.

When an email is received, the message will run against the sieve filters which are set on the account. This can be examined via the MailSite console, under the properties of the mailbox and under the Delivery Actions tab. If the message meets the any criteria pertaining to SMS notification, then the server will generate a message to send to the cell phone network.

If the SMS notifications are still not being received after the number and network details have been verified then you can turn to the logging options within MailSite.

Open the MailSite Console
Under Server > Logs > Operations Log Flags
Enable Protocol Exchanges (to file log) under the SMTPDA service
Under Server > Logs > Error Log Flags
Enable Protocol Command Failures (to file log)
Note: If you enable any of the logging options, you should stop and restart the SMTPDA service for it to take effect.

Then ask the user send an email to their account. MailSite should attempt to generate an SMS notification and deliver that notification in the form of a short email to the network provider. MailSite will use the cell number and network provided and look this up against the domain name provided within the Wireless Carriers (within MailSite Console) to derive an email address for the cell phone.

For example the Cingular network translates to the email domain of 'mobile.mycingular.com'. MailSite will attempt to send an email to:

408XXXXXXX@mobile.mycingular.com

If received correctly, the Cingular server will then generate an SMS notification and deliver it to the cell phone. Similarly the email domain for SprintPCS is messaging.sprintpcs.com.

You can perform a quick test to see if the messages are received to the phone by sending an email directly to the following email address: phonenumber@emaildomain.com

Eg: 4080000000@mobile.mycingular.com

If a SMS alert is recevied by the phone, then the phone is set up correctly to receive SMS messages.

If the message is not received by the phone then examine the Log files. First look within the most recent ERRXXXXXXXX.log file you may see something like this:

SMTP command failed when talking to mx.mycingular.net:
<<< MAIL FROM:<1@support2.rockliffe.com> SIZE=287
>>> 553 5.1.8 <1@support2.rockliffe.com>... Domain of sender address
1@support2.rockliffe.com does not exist

In this particular example we can see the Cingular network has rejected the connection from the mail server. The domain support2.rockliffe.com is a bogus domain. In such this example we would need to register this domain with correct mx records and then retry.

From the errors reported in the Error log you should be able to narrow down where the issue is.

If the ErrXXXXXXXX.log does not show anything, then look within the most recent SMTPDAXXXXXXX.log for entries similar to:

---- SMTPDA log entry made at 01/20/2006 11:26:20
>>> 220 wcmta3.mycingular.net ESMTP Mail Server Ready
<<< EHLO rockliffe.com
>>> 250-wcmta3.mycingular.net Hello [147.208.128.20], pleased to meet you
250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
250-PIPELINING
250-8BITMIME
250-SIZE 3145728
250-DSN
250-ETRN
250-DELIVERBY
250 HELP
<<< MAIL FROM: SIZE=297
>>> 250 2.1.0 ... Sender ok
<<< RCPT TO:<408XXXXXXX@mobile.mycingular.com>
>>> 250 2.1.5 <408XXXXXX@mobile.mycingular.com>... Recipient ok
<<< DATA
>>> 354 Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself
>>> 250 2.0.0 k0KJQDLW026235 Message accepted for delivery
<<< QUIT
>>> 221 2.0.0 wcmta3.mycingular.net closing connection

The above log shows that MailSite was able to connect successfully to the Cingular network and the Cingular server accepted the message for delivery.

If the user is still reporting problems then check the following:

Check with the network provider that the cell phone in question has the ability to receive SMS notifications via email. Many cell phone companies turn this feature OFF by default and the user must request to enable it.
Check that the email being sent is not being rejected due to the use of forbidden language. Sending a message simply with 'test' for the subject and body will allow you to test this.
Typically if the SMTPDA logs show a successful connection was made to the remote server, then the problem lies between the network provider and the cell phone account.

Hint: If the log file is large, then you can search for the cell phone number, network provider or time to help locate the relevant entries.

Last revised 2006-9-29