Symptom
- Top reasons why email notifications are not sent/received
- Emails not received or not triggered by the application. How to troubleshoot.
"Image/data in this KBA is from SAP internal systems, sample data, or demo systems. Any resemblance to real data is purely coincidental."
Environment
SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite
Cause
There are multiple possible causes for email notifications not being delivered. Below we will go through the most common causes.
- The user’s email is incorrect (misspelled or different email address in the system).
- The specific email notification is not enabled to trigger emails.
- The user’s email is disabled.
- The user does not have Login Permission.
- The user is not assigned to the default user group. (Skip this step if you are using Role Based Permissions.)
- The Single Recipient feature is enabled in provisioning.
- The emails are being spammed (blocked by the customer’s firewall).
- Emails not received due to Forgot Password.
- The user’s email is used for other users in the system, and therefore the system doesn’t know to whom to send the notification. This could be especially true for retrieving usernames.
- Consolidated email notifications are enabled.
- The email is delayed due to servers being busy.
Resolution
- The user’s email is incorrect (misspelled or different email address in the system) or missing/empty.
Admin Center > Manage Users
Admin Center > Employee Export > Check value in user export file
Check user value email in their Employee profile information - The specific email notification is not enabled to trigger emails.
Admin Center > Company Settings > E-Mail Notification Templates Settings
Options > Notifications (if you are the affected user) - The user’s email is disabled
Admin Center > Change User Email Notification - The user does not have User Login permission.
Admin Center > View User Permission
Check user has access to RBP Group that contains User Login permission. - The user is not assigned to the default user group (skip this step if you are using Role Based Permissions).
Admin Center > Default User Group Assignment - The Single Recipient feature is enabled in Manage Email Notifications.
- If the Single Recipient Feature is enabled all system generated emails will be triggered but will be forwarded to the configured email.
- For more information on this feature see the KBA 2087739 - Single Sender and Single Recipient | How They Work and Setting Them Up in SuccessFactors.
- Login to instance
- Admin Center > Manage Email Notifications
- Search for Single Recipient and review the settings.
- As per the configurations in the screenshot below, all system emails will be forwarded to the email SingleRecipientEmail@SuccessFactors.com
- The emails are being spammed (blocked by the customer’s firewall).
See KB article 2087468 Email Notifications: Emails Blocked or Not Delivered Due to Spam Filters, Spoofing, Bombing (mass mail), IP Address Allowlists - Emails not received due to Forgot Password.
Password not being received – Is the user using their username to retrieve their password? Note that username is case & space sensitive.
Is “Forget Password Support Notification” enabled under email-notifications?
Username not being received – Is the user using the correct email address to retrieve username?
Company ID – Is the user using the correct company ID? Note username is case & space sensitive.
Is the same email address is attached to more than one username - The user’s email is used for other users in the system, and therefore the system doesn’t know to whom to send the notificatio. This could be especially true for retrieving username.
Check the User Data File (UDF) for duplicate emails
Note: For workflow notifications, you need to check the business email in the contact information portlet. - Consolidated email notifications are enabled.
Admin Center
Company Settings
E-Mail Notification Templates Settings
Check “Interval For Consolidated Emails (In Hours Starting From 12:00am)” in Email Notifications. - The email is delayed due to servers being busy
If all emails have worked in the past, but all emails have now stopped, please open a support case to check if there are currently any system issues being reported.
How to isolate the possible causes for email not being sent:
The steps below will help you determine by using simple steps, whether the email issue is due to an environmental issue (either on the Data Center level or at the customer's email server level).
How to check if the email is being sent?
- In order to verify if the email is being sent, we can ask the customer to change the email address of an affected user to another email address and ask them to replicate the issue.
You could use a common email address like Gmail, Hotmail, etc. - If you receive the email, then this is proof that the email was generated and that the feature should work each time. Ask the customer to test it again with their email.
- If the email is received for you but still not for customer, it could be their email server settings.
You should go through KBA 2087468 - Email Notifications: Emails Blocked or Not Delivered Due to Spam Filters, Spoofing, Bombing (mass mail), IP Address Allowlists.
- If the email is received for both parties but was not sent previously for the customer or if nobody receives the email then you need to engage with Support to have them check with the Operations team if the email was sent and if mail servers are working optimally.
What if I am receiving the email intermittently? Sometimes it gets sent and other times it does not.
- Our Datacenters use more than one email server per datacenter. Therefore it is important to make sure that ALL servers have been allowlisted by the receiving end (customer's mail servers).
- See KB article 2087468 - Email Notifications: Emails Blocked or Not Delivered Due to Spam Filters, Spoofing, Bombing (mass mail), IP Address Allowlists
- If all corresponding email servers have been allowlisted, then it may indicate that one or more email servers on the datacenter side are experiencing issues.
- Open a case with Product Support to have this checked.
Emails used to work and suddenly they are no longer being received for all users.
- Your first check should always be to verify with an "outside" email. This will help you eliminate the customer's email server from the equation.
- If the mail is still not received then it's probably a datacenter wide issue.
- A case should be raised with Product Suport if this is the situation.
Note: Email issues can often be easily resolved by the client following some basic tests outlined above, as well as some basic logic testing which we will outline below.
That said, as there could be multiple causes, please feel free to engage with customer support and have them evaluate all possible causes.
Please find the below generic recipient pattern that will be discarded internally in the email infrastructure.
Regex (.*) meaning any characters, so any recipients starting with dummy@anydomain will be ignored along with the other recipients in the same message.
Similarly, any recipient for the @example.com domain will be discarded and so on. This is the generic list for all the DCs.
/^.*@example\.com$/ discard
/^.*@test\.com$/ discard
/^.*@.*\.test\.com$/ discard
/^.*noemail.*@.*$/ discard
/^.*test.*@.*$/ discard
*SF Email sent to end user who's email is XXX@sap.com recipients (SAP colleague)
In the past, we relayed emails with @sap.com recipients directly to the SAP mail gateway will be rejected by SAP mail gateway. However now no the rule is not valid anymore. Means in below scenarios, recpient email is XXX@sap.com can receive SF email as normal:
- recpient email is XXX@sap.com
- customer has enabled Single Sender.
- customer add new provisioner which will send email to the new provisioner; the provisioner is SAP colleague
So as of now, emails to @sap.com are being sent through the internet, to whatever is in the domain’s MX record like any other mail traffic.
See Also
3199297 - External mail providers blocking mails from Recruiting
Keywords
SF, success factors, PLT, bizx, biz x, e-mail, notification, not delivered, not sent, not triggered, not received, blocked, Message Centre,workflow , KBA , sf email notifications , LOD-SF-PLT-NOT , Email Notifications , LOD-SF-EC-WFL , Workflows - Configuration, Tools, Objects & Rules , Problem