Common iMIS Email Issues and Setup

If you experience email errors while sending or creating messages, please review the following items to ensure everything is set up correctly: For any changes you make, always click Save to lock in those changes.

Email Settings/Setup

-Template Timeout/ Cacheing: If you have had the email template you're working on open for longer than about 5-10 minutes, save, close and reopen your email template, you may need to close out and open a new browser tab if you've been working in as sometimes there are caching issues with email templates being open for too long.

Email Header:

-The "From" field should always be formatted like "display name" ; for example: SRS Membership <srsmembership@srsnet.org>;
-For mass mailing (and email testing) the "To" field should always be set to {#party.Email};
-The "Type" of email corresponds with the customer's communication preferences that they've either opted in or out of. This is not a required field

-"track this email using advanced email" check this to allow advanced tracking. When sending with this turned on, it may take awhile to send to all of your recipients, and when checking the communication logs it will initially say "not sent" however, this is normal as advanced email takes longer to send, they will slowly begin to send and you'll see that number change (refresh the communication logs about 10 minutes after sending). (check the advanced email statuses at the bottom of this article for more info.)
below is an image example of a working email header
Click Save if you've made any changes here.

Recipients:

-For testing and preview of emails the Query box should always be set to the following query: $/Communications/DefaultSystem/Queries/SelectedContact
Once you enter the query in, the page may reload, make sure to click save after the page reloads. 

When you are ready to send to a large amount of people, update the recipients query with the query containing the contacts you want to send to. Once the query loads, you should see a list of people under the recipients tab. Click Save. 

Data Sources:

-The data sources can have several different items listed but at the very least, you should see a Query labelled "Default" with an Alias of "Party" -If this is NOT the case, please check the below step labelled "-No Such Property OR "To" field is blank in the email preview" and follow step 1.

Email is Not Sending

There can be many reasons why a test email may not be sending, please follow the below steps in order to check that the email is properly setup. the first few items are simple checks for more common issues, and they get more specific as you progress through the troubleshooting steps:

-Template Timeout/ Cacheing: If you have the email template you're working on open for longer than about 5-10 minutes, save, close and reopen your email template, you may even need to close out and open a new browser tab if you've been working in as sometimes there are caching issues with email templates being open for too long.

-Using Advanced Email: If advanced email is turned on, it may take a few minutes for your email template to send. You may see that when you check the communication logs, that the email has not sent, however if you click into the details in the log you may see a status of "queuing" but that your email did not send. This means that the email is sending, but because of the way advanced email works, it may take a couple minutes to fully execute. (check the advanced email statuses at the bottom of this article for more info.)

-Timing: If you sent an email just before a mass email went out, it's possible that your email will be sent after the mass mailing has completed.

-Check the Recipients tab: ensure that the following message is displayed beneath the query (your name will be here - see image below). If the message is different or your name is not displayed, in the query box enter this query: $/Communications/DefaultSystem/Queries/SelectedContact

Once you enter the query in, the page may reload, make sure to click save after the page reloads.

-Check the Preview Button: Select the "Preview" button, you should be seeing your email in the "To" field and "preview 1 of 1" as well as your entire email template (see image below).

If this is NOT the case, double check the recipients Query and make sure it is set to  the following query for testing only: $/Communications/DefaultSystem/Queries/SelectedContact
OR your own recipients query if sending to several contacts.
If the query is correct, go to the "Header" tab and make sure the "To" field is set to {#party.Email};


-No Such Property OR "To" field is blank in the email preview : If you enter the email preview and you see in place of your email address or anywhere through the email preview a yellow highlighted section saying "no such property" (see image below) OR you see a blank space in the "To" field in the preview, this means that the template does not recognize certain dynamic fields.

There could be a couple reasons this is happening: 

1. The data source does not exist.

To Fix this issue: check that the data source exists, for the example in the image below the data source is the text between the # and . symbols - {#DATASOURCE.property}. In this case the data source is "Party". Close the preview and check the "Data sources" tab. Ensure that under the data sources there is an Alias for the data source you're looking for, in this example it will be "party". If the data source is missing or there is no data source, in the upper right hand corner select "Add Data Source" If like in this example "party" is missing, under "query" enter $/Communications/DefaultSystem/Queries/Party/Default
and under "Alias" enter party.
Click Save.

If a different data source is missing, that will correspond to a different query, if you are not sure of the query to pull, reach out to IT for further assistance.

2. The property could be spelled wrong or have improper syntax. 

To fix this issue: assuming the data source exists, we will check the property name is correct. If the alias exists and is spelled correctly, now we will check for the property name, if you're using "party" as the data source, some common syntax and spelling issues can be fixed by checking the list below (feel free to copy and paste in your email):
First Name: {#party.FirstName}
Last Name: {#party.LastName)
Email: {#party.Email}

Advanced Email Communication Logs Statuses

To check the advanced email sending status, go to the "Communication Log" and select an email you sent using advanced email. When you click on the email you will see the interaction log and a status, see the chart below to match the status.