Send Email Configure From Address

RE: Send Email Configure From Address

Mike Schmitt — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 17:40:31 GMT

[quote userid="2401" url="~/discussions/f/administration/17793/send-email-configure-from-address/70248"]Almost sounds like a customized custom sender[/quote]

exactly - at the start of the project i'm referring to (back in late 2012 or early 2013) the customer told us in no uncertain terms that emails were required to show up as if they were from the user who actually sent it from within the application, especially as many such recipients would be external users in external organizations / customer accounts, who wouldn't understand not being able to just click reply to an email. The solution that they put in place for us, actually shows the same "named" sender for anyone in the environment, but the reply-to address would be correct per the user in question. It's what we still use, as the OOTB 18.4 functionality was rendered basically useless by the "requirement" to set the "return-path" and "sender" as the system default notification email address (meaning it was apparently getting bounced by many external servers as this mismatch throws certain soft validation errors).

RE: Send Email Configure From Address

Chris — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 19:51:43 GMT

Almost sounds like a customized custom sender - using the old config OOTB we never had the option to have dynamic/pv senders - only a constant that holds the email address. One HR solution with different emails per division (4) involved 4 custom sender configurations and a sub process with 4 matching email nodes, minus the sender changed per division on each.

RE: Send Email Configure From Address

Mike Schmitt — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 18:38:48 GMT

Here are the exact header differences of note as per the support case I previously ran through Appian. Note that our previous solution was the customized sender option where the send email smart service required a user PV named "pv!fromUser" to be populated, to pull sender info from. I don't have any access to the configuration files involved since it's all on cloud, so I can't tell you exactly what the configuration looked like.

Pre-18.4 Functionality:
- The "From" header appears as the email address for pv!fromUser
-  The "Return-Path" header appears as  the email address for pv!fromUser
- (There is no "Sender" header appended)

18.4+ Functionality:
- The "From" header appears as the email address for pv!fromUser
- The "Return-Path" header appears as the system notification email address
- The "Sender" header appears as the system notification email address

RE: Send Email Configure From Address

Peter Lewis — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 18:06:12 GMT

Ah okay that is good to know - I wasn't aware of this issue with the new custom email sender, and I'll add to the case to address this scenario. Thanks for the info!

RE: Send Email Configure From Address

Chris — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 17:38:52 GMT

I'm wondering if your environment had the sender property modified in the email-address-config.xml file. We've always used the server email sender "bpm" in there, with the "From" as the address to be included "on behalf of".

   <address name="serviceDesk" sender="bpm">
     <expression>=cons!SERVICE_DESK_EMAIL</expression>
   </address>

RE: Send Email Configure From Address

Chris — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 17:29:57 GMT

Interesting, in our environment the header information as well as "on behalf of" is the same across both old and new configuration methods. Just ran a test and compared headers, they match..

RE: Send Email Configure From Address

Mike Schmitt — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 17:07:43 GMT

However there's a specific difference with the new functionality that's impossible to override. It boils down to the fact that the "sender" header or similar (i'll have to look again to remember if this is the correct one or not), is forced to use the environment-specific "admin email address" when sending using the new setup. The prior custom sender workaround which we've also been using for 5 years in production, allows emails to be sent as if they're actually coming from the user account passed in. In our system this caused immediate failures because at least one of the mail handlers along the line rejected the apparent mismatch. If you examine the headers for the new way compared to the old way, it'll become immediately obvious what the difference is - and no resolution has been provided for this (again, "because security" or something.)

RE: Send Email Configure From Address

Chris — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 16:54:22 GMT

Note that the 17.1 Custom Email Senders documentation you linked to above, will also come out as "on behalf of". The reply is returned to the correct "From" setting however. We've been using this internally for years, in the process of converting to the new in-node configuration as Tejas linked to.

RE: Send Email Configure From Address

Mike Schmitt — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 14:38:54 GMT

I previously asked Appian support about this and they claimed it was implemented that way due to "security requirements" or some-such; i found this to cause the feature to be basically unusable for my main client as well because it causes emails to bounce for various reasons.

RE: Send Email Configure From Address

ganeshbabuj — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 13:57:35 GMT

using the existing functionality the email send out has "on behalf of". which our client do not want to see and they wanted to reply back to the same email for further actions.

Is there any way to get off "on behalf of" please let know we are looking for that solution only

RE: Send Email Configure From Address

Peter Lewis — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 12:58:00 GMT

I would strongly suggest against changing those files if you are in 18.4 or later. As Tejas mentioned above, there is a new feature that allows you to directly type in the sender email address into the send email node, which is much easier to manage (and you can even use an expression to define the sender email). Using the files you mentioned requires (1) updating custom.properties (which you need access to the server to update), and (2) restarting the application server, which could be disruptive to your users.

RE: Send Email Configure From Address

ganeshbabuj — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 05:21:25 GMT

Got it confirmed below are the 2 files that needs to be updated for version above 18.4

APPIAN_HOME\deployment\web.war\WEB-INF\conf\process\email-address-config.xml

APPIAN_HOME\deployment\web.war\WEB-INF\resources\text\jsp\WEB-INF\conf\process\email-address-config_en_US.properties

RE: Send Email Configure From Address

Tejas Kargutkar — Tue, 29 Oct 2019 17:52:54 GMT

You no longer need to create custom files to achieve this. Please refer to the following link: https://docs.appian.com/suite/help/19.2/Configuring_Custom_Email_Senders.html