2086570 - Troubleshooting Goal Email Issues - Email Notifications

• How to diagnose a variety of email issues specific to Goal Planning?
• The email notifications for a goal plan not working at all or as expected. What to check or how to troubleshoot these issues?

SAP SuccessFactors Goal Management

This solution will help you to troubleshoot a variety of email issues. By nature email issues can be difficult to troubleshoot as the issue often lies with the clients software or systems and not the product, so often we are troubleshooting a “failure to receive” as opposed to a “failure to send”.

This provides only the MAIN tests a client can take to rule out likely causes. If you the client are unable to self resolve the issue with these common causes, please open a support ticket as our engineers have a number of more involved tests we can run. That will typically require we schedule a 1 hour meeting with you and your IT to run these deeper tests, and since most issues can be resolved without that level of investigation with the following checks, we recommend that is always first done by your or your administrator.

SuccessFactors Support or Partners should NOT start by opening a COSR ticket until you have fully evaluated the email issue based on the options below. First establish the facts based on the tests outlined, so that should a COSR be needed, it is to request specific actions based on the supporting information we gather & submit in a case.

Note: If the goal section is actually on a performance form and the issue is related to the performance form please use the performance email troubleshooting guide, as this information is specific to just Goal Plans.

No users getting ANY emails from SuccessFactors

1. Are you a new client just started using SuccessFactors?
   1. Yes >This is probably an issue with a new client where our email servers and or emails are being blocked.
      See the solution 2087468 - Emails Blocked or Not Delivered Due to Spam Filters, Spoofing, Bombing (mass mail), IP Address Allowlists
   2. No > When did this begin? If you have been using the product for some time and users have not historically had any issues receiving emails, then try to establish with your IT if anything on end recently changed with your email Servers. 

Test 1: Check Individuals Email/Notification Settings

Go to Admin center > Manage Users > Change User Email Notification

If it is just one or a few users > Search for the user(s) having issues to confirm that emails are enabled for them.

For any user you see that does not have Email Notification checked, check the box and save the setting. This should resolve the issue if it was noted the user reporting issues did not have emails enabled.

Inform the client of the setting you found and have them retest to confirm the user is now receiving emails. If the setting was checked then continue to troubleshoot.

Test 2: Confirm User Account is Valid

Go to Admin center > Change user information > Search for user > confirm they are active.

• If the user cannot be found then they may not be an active user. Emails will only go to an active user with a valid email address.
  • You might want to perform a quick Send System Message test by changing the email address to your own address and confirming you get the email for this username. This quickly confirms that in general this user’s account does not have any unusual problems.
  • Make sure to note the user’s email address and restore when completed

Test 3: Send Direct Email Message

If this is a case of just one or a few users not getting ANY emails then:

• Send a direct email to them.  Ask them to acknowledge they have received this direct email.
• Once they respond we have the first basic confirmation the user does receive emails
  • If they never respond the user may have an issue that their IT needs to address.

Test 4: Send System Message

Go to Admin Center > Manage Users > Send System Message Email Notification

• Change the email address on record via admin tools “Change User Info” to an address such as Yahoo, AOL that will not be impacted by your internal systems.
• From admin tools send a System Message email to the user you entered your email address for. This will test that the user account is valid. It will also give us a confirmation that the SuccessFactors product is sending emails
• Confirm message: 1 users have been sent with the email notifications
• Document the time you performed this test
• Confirm you receive the system message for this user account.
• If you receive the email immediately it confirms a basic test that our system is sending emails, and that this user account will receive emails if they have a valid email address that has no spam or spoof blocking occurring.
• If you do NOT receive the email we have our basic confirmation that Performance Manager is NOT sending emails.

Test 5: Check E-Mail Notification Templates settings

If NO ONE is getting a specific email then this might be your first test, as opposed to the last test.

Go to Admin Center > System Properties > E-Mail Notification Templates Settings

• Confirm that the email notification that you are expecting to receive is enabled. If disabled enable it and perform a test that will trigger that email notification.
• If the expected notification is not on, enable it and perform a test.
• Check Recipients settings: For some email templates such as Completed Notifications there is a “Recipients” setting. This can be set to send notifications to specific roles such as E, EM & EH. Make sure that this has not been set to exclude the person/role that is not getting the notification.

In troubleshooting email issues it pays to understand who should, or would typically get the email to begin with. This can help you determine if the feature is working correctly as designed if a certain role, such as manager for example, is not designed to get an email to begin with.

Test 6: Confirm Consolidated Emails is not enabled

Go to Admin Center > System Properties > E-Mail Notification Templates Settings > Open specific email template

Confirm if “consolidated notifications” is enabled or not. If it is, then users will only get emails once a day. If users are getting emails delivered the next day this might explain why it is not received immediately.

Final Steps

• If none of the above works, please open a case with support. We can schedule a call with you to do a deeper more thorough round of tests.
• Support & Partners: Please use our Main Email Troubleshooting solution to gather diagnostic information.

KBA 2185285 - Error - Unable to save changes on Email Notification Template Settings with error Your request has not been processed successfully - Platform

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