Troubleshooting notification emails

Logs and diagnostics are provided to help determine whether notification emails are being sent and received successfully, what any issues are, and who receives the email.

Diagnostics help monitor the overall health of the system and troubleshoot general problems, such as not receiving any incoming mail. Logs help identify problems with individual emails, and different logs are useful for diagnosing different types of problems.

Log checking scenarios


Problem	Log
Need to check whether an individual notification email was successfully sent	Check the Sent System Mailbox for that email. Also check the Failed System Mailbox for failure notifications.
Individual email failed	Check the message log of the individual email. Check the Error string field of the email record. Warning: Some email servers do not return error strings
Email not received by end user	Check the Junk System Mailbox for notifications about returned emails. These emails also appear in the Emails log with a Type of received-ignored. Check the Error string field of the email record. Warning: Some email servers do not return error strings Check the message log of the individual email for the reasons different recipients were included or excluded.

Troubleshooting resources

See the following resources on troubleshooting inbound and outbound email problems.


Error or symptom	Solution
Instance not receiving inbound email	See Inbound Email Troubleshooting, ServiceNow KB0524472. This KB article also provides links to a video series on troubleshooting inbound emails.
Instance not sending outbound email	See Troubleshooting Outbound Email, ServiceNow KB0521382. This KB article also provides links to a video series on troubleshooting outbound emails.
Email from Outlook produces an empty Incident record containing an attachment named winmail.dat.	Configure the local Outlook client or Exchange server to not send Rich Text formatted (RTF) data to the instance.

Troubleshooting notification emails

Logs and diagnostics are provided to help determine whether notification emails are being sent and received successfully, what any issues are, and who receives the email.

Log checking scenarios


Problem	Log
Need to check whether an individual notification email was successfully sent	Check the Sent System Mailbox for that email. Also check the Failed System Mailbox for failure notifications.
Individual email failed	Check the message log of the individual email. Check the Error string field of the email record. Warning: Some email servers do not return error strings
Email not received by end user	Check the Junk System Mailbox for notifications about returned emails. These emails also appear in the Emails log with a Type of received-ignored. Check the Error string field of the email record. Warning: Some email servers do not return error strings Check the message log of the individual email for the reasons different recipients were included or excluded.

Troubleshooting resources

See the following resources on troubleshooting inbound and outbound email problems.


Error or symptom	Solution
Instance not receiving inbound email	See Inbound Email Troubleshooting, ServiceNow KB0524472. This KB article also provides links to a video series on troubleshooting inbound emails.
Instance not sending outbound email	See Troubleshooting Outbound Email, ServiceNow KB0521382. This KB article also provides links to a video series on troubleshooting outbound emails.
Email from Outlook produces an empty Incident record containing an attachment named winmail.dat.	Configure the local Outlook client or Exchange server to not send Rich Text formatted (RTF) data to the instance.

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Troubleshooting notification emails

Troubleshooting notification emails

Log checking scenarios

Troubleshooting resources

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Troubleshooting notification emails

Troubleshooting notification emails

Log checking scenarios

Troubleshooting resources

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