Emails not going to all enrolled

Emails not going to all enrolled

by tim hamilton -
Number of replies: 7

My apologies if this is in the wrong place. I am a novice admin with an email problem. I have read through the FAQs for beginning Admins and couldn't find an answer.

I am running 2.0 on a self-installation (Simple Scripts) on a hosting service (Bluehost). I don't use an SMTP. I left those lines blank in the Email settings, relying on Moodle's own Php program.

I've created four forums (two courses with social formats and two created as Activities inside course). The problem is that some people are receiving the emails and some are not. Out of 119 total users, about half didn't receive the mailing today. I've made subscription mandatory in each of the forums.

 Here is an example from the error log of one failure.

ERROR! Error: mod/forum/cron.php: Could not send out digest mail to user 40 (charles.radcliffe@tutorvista.com)... not trying again. Processing email digest for user 41... Invalid address: 1success. Processing email digest for user 42... Invalid address: 1SMTP Error: Data not accepted. ERROR: SMTP Error: Data not accepted.<p>SMTP server error: Administrative prohibition </p>

Can someone point me in the right direction, either in my settings or in the forums here?

Much obliged,
Tim

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In reply to tim hamilton

Re: Emails not going to all enrolled

by John Andrewartha -

Tim,

Set the smtp host if you can.  That will at least make the Mail Transfer Unit write reports to it's log file.

Next ask your host to ensure that the local mailer accepts mail from your domain.  Common problem.  IE Sendmail relay-domains, make sure they have there local-host-names set as well.  Make sure they restart the mailer for the changes to take effect.

Post a test message from a forum. If it wont go ask for a tail of the hosts maillog for that time.

If the mailer says NO it will tell you why.

Let me know how you go.

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In reply to John Andrewartha

Re: Emails not going to all enrolled

by Mark Calhoun -

John,

I am having the same problem. I am not sure that my settings are correct as far as SMTP host, SMTP username, and SMTP password. For the username and password our network admnistrator created a special email address and put it in those fields.... is that the correct information? User name was an actual domain based email address like moodle@ our domain. Perhaps our problem is with the local mailer settings you suggested above...

 

Thanks

Mark

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In reply to John Andrewartha

Re: Emails not going to all enrolled

by José Oliveira -

I have set the smtp server/username/password and it does not work in moodle 2.0.1:

"Invalid address: SMTP Error: Could not authenticate. ERROR: SMTP Error: Could not authenticate. SMTP server error: Incorrect authentication data"

 

Can you help me?

 

Thanks,

José Oliveira

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In reply to tim hamilton

Re: Emails not going to all enrolled

by joan marc riera -

Hey, we just had the same issue.

 

If you go to the forum module admin section, you MUST uncheck the :

Use email address in replyforum_replytouser
Default: Yes
When a forum post is mailed out, should it contain the user's email address so that recipients can reply personally rather than via the forum? Even if set to 'Yes' users can choose in their profile to keep their email address secret.
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In reply to joan marc riera

Re: Emails not going to all enrolled

by Kathleen Guerra -

Why does unchecking "use email address in reply" make the difference? 

I am also experiencing an issues with emails for forum posts.  I am using Moodle 1.9.9.  Here is the behavior that I am seeing. 

Admins and instructors are receiving emails for forum posts.  Their profiles are set to:

  • No digest (single email per post)
  • Yes: when I post, subscribe me to that forum

Students are not receiving emails for forum posts.  Their profiles are set to:

  • Complete (daily email with full posts)
  • Yes: when I post, subscribe me to that forum 

I modified the forums in the course to force everyone to be subscribed, but this did not change anything.

I found the following note in Help. 

Note how the "Yes, initially" option behaves when you update an existing forum: Changing from "Yes, initially" to "No" will not unsubscribe existing users, it will only affect future course users. Similarly changing later to "Yes, initially" will not subscribe existing course users but only those enrolling later.

Based on the above, I'm wondering if the forced subscription will also not subscribe existing users.

Why would my admins and instructors receive the emails, but not the students?  Does the daily digest not work?  I don't want to switch the students to receiving one email per post as I know they will be inundated with email.

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In reply to Kathleen Guerra

Re: Emails not going to all enrolled

by Kathleen Guerra -

We identified a resolution for our forum email problem.  Here was our scenario and the fix in case this helps others.

Scenario:

Our course has multiple forums (one per week).  We found that some students were getting emails for some forums, but not everyone was getting emails.  When we investigated further, it became clear that students received emails for forums to which they had previously posted and not to forums to which they had not yet posted.

This was due to the combination of these settings:

  • Student profiles included this setting for Forum auto-subscribe: “Yes, when I post, subscribe me to that forum”. 
  • Each of the forums in the course was set to “Allow everyone to choose to subscribe”.
  • The combination of these settings resulted in students getting emails for forums only if they have posted to the forum already.

To fix this, we did the following:

  • Force subscribed everyone in the class to every forum. 
  • De-enrolled all of the students.
  • Re-enrolled all of the students.
  • The force subscription then took effect.

Hope this helps!

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Kathleen Guerra

Re: Emails not going to all enrolled

by Jamal Aruna -

hello kathleen,

Could you please specify how the de enrollment and re-enrollment was done safely?i have over 40,000 students on my moodle and would really want to be sure before i perform tasks like this smile

Thank you

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