"Send A Message" - unable to send to all members

Discussions about the Leader and Clerk Resources on lds.org.
kmertlich
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Joined: Fri Dec 31, 2010 11:55 am
Location: Layton, Utah

"Send A Message" - unable to send to all members

#1

Post by kmertlich »

I am unable to use the "Send A Message" feature located with the Leaders & Clerks Resource page. When I select to send to all stake adult members I receive an error message.

"Your message was not sent. Either the email service is not available or one of the recipients may have an unknown email address."

I am able to send emails to myself or smaller groups. How can I resolve this issue?
genman
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Joined: Wed Feb 08, 2012 4:51 pm
Location: US

#2

Post by genman »

I have not seen that before. Not sure why one unknown email address would prevent the message from being sent. My guess is that the server was down when you tried. Is it still happening? And, I'm not sure how you send things to "all stake adult members". I have personally never received a Send A Message that was directed to the entire stake. I assumed that it was either not supported, or the stake presidency prefers to send things to Bishops to get the word out that way.
kmertlich
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Posts: 41
Joined: Fri Dec 31, 2010 11:55 am
Location: Layton, Utah

#3

Post by kmertlich »

genman wrote:I have not seen that before. Not sure why one unknown email address would prevent the message from being sent. My guess is that the server was down when you tried. Is it still happening? And, I'm not sure how you send things to "all stake adult members". I have personally never received a Send A Message that was directed to the entire stake. I assumed that it was either not supported, or the stake presidency prefers to send things to Bishops to get the word out that way.

I had hoped that it was just the server being down. But that does not seem to be the problem. If it where then I am a very unlucky person because over the past month or two I have attempted to send three different requested messages out to "All adult members" and continue to get the same error message. As a general rule i will create a message first, send the message to my email account as a test, and then distribute to the larger group. As I mentioned, I'm able to send out messages to small groups.
This feature has worked in the past because since it became available I have sent approximately six stake messages to all members. Announcing stake conference is an example of what has been distributed.

The two category options available to the stake are to send to Leaders and Members. The "All adult members" is a group under Members. The other group under Members is to send to "All Members".

Any help you can provide in tracking down the "one of the recipients may have an unknown email address." would be greatly appreciated.
kmertlich
New Member
Posts: 41
Joined: Fri Dec 31, 2010 11:55 am
Location: Layton, Utah

#4

Post by kmertlich »

I may have found one possible reason for the error message. Tonight I was sending a message to a Ward Council and one member, who use to work for familysearch.org, has not yet updated his email address in lds.org. His email account is still listed as [accountname]@familysearch.org. This email account is no longer valid. There seems to be some validation checking taking place on the church email accounts that flags it as an "unknown email address".

If I try to send and email through my gmail account to [accountname]@familysearch.org I receive the following email back:
--------------
DELIVERY STATUS NOTIFICATION (FAILURE)
Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:
xxxx@familysearch.org
Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550 5.1.1 User Unknown (state 14).
------------

Hopefully this will help to resolve the problem.
Thanks
jdlessley
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Location: USA, TX

#5

Post by jdlessley »

That would go along with the original error message you posted.

This sounds like a weak link (bug) in the messaging system. It is very likely that members will have invalid e-mail addresses as they forget to update their profiles. The system needs to be able to identify the invalid e-mail addresses and ignore them. If not then there will continue to be failures in the system to send group e-mails.
JD Lessley
Have you tried finding your answer on the ChurchofJesusChrist.org Help Center or Tech Wiki?
genman
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Posts: 144
Joined: Wed Feb 08, 2012 4:51 pm
Location: US

#6

Post by genman »

jdlessley wrote:It is very likely that members will have invalid e-mail addresses as they forget to update their profiles. The system needs to be able to identify the invalid e-mail addresses and ignore them.

The system does not appear to choke on every non-working email address. The example given was for an obsolete church-domain email address (e.g. @familysearch.org). So, the problem may not be as bad as you think. Having said that, I agree that the system should not prevent other emails from going out just because of a problem with one. However, would be nice if there was a way of highlighting the known invalid addresses so a clerk or executive secretary can follow-up on it.
kmertlich
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Posts: 41
Joined: Fri Dec 31, 2010 11:55 am
Location: Layton, Utah

#7

Post by kmertlich »

Correct. It appears the issue is with church domain email accounts (e.g. @familysearch.org, @ldschurch.org, ...).
Is someone from the development team reviewing these posts or should I be using someother means to communicate this bug?
jdlessley
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Posts: 9858
Joined: Mon Mar 17, 2008 12:30 am
Location: USA, TX

#8

Post by jdlessley »

The front-end development lead for LDS.org is Aaron Barker. He has been a regular on these forums. There are others also who frequent the forums. Whether or not they have noticed this particular thread issue is unknown.

Normally I would suggest submitting feedback using the "Do You Have Feedback On This Page?" link found on most LDS.org pages. But unfortunately Leader and Clerk Resources pages do not have this link. But you could use the one found on the LDS.org home page.
JD Lessley
Have you tried finding your answer on the ChurchofJesusChrist.org Help Center or Tech Wiki?
tclubb
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Joined: Thu Sep 13, 2012 10:11 am

#9

Post by tclubb »

I am the Bishop of my Ward and when I have tried sending an email to either individuals or groups (EQ, HP) some of the individuals I get this message "recipients have opted out or do not have an email address in Ward Directory / MLS". When I go to the directory and check the email status I noticed the ones that have their email setting set to “Ward” or Private (Leadership only) get this message. I conducted an informal low tech test to prove my theory and had one of the members change their status from ward visibility to stake visibility and I was able to send them an email. But when their status was at ward or private (Leadership only), I was not able to send them an email and received the same message “recipients have opted out or do not have an email address in Ward Directory / MLS”.

Is this an error in the system or is it intended to be this way?
rivasj01
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Joined: Sun Jul 22, 2012 1:47 pm

#10

Post by rivasj01 »

I find that it is easier and more successful when I copy the emails abd paste them into a compose email in Gmail. Gmail with return separate messages for those recipients that were not recognized by s postmaste. The problem is usually caused when a member's email is not updated. LDS does not only does send messages if there is an error in one of the receipients, even the ones with email errors.
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