03 March 2025

Email Workflow and Troubleshooting

In several modules of ebs, users can communicate with contacts via email.

There are multiple technical steps that occur to send an email from ebs shown in the following diagram:

Email workflow diagram

The flow can be described in the following way:

  1. The ebs user initiates the email communication with a contact.

  2. The workflow service generates the email.

  3. The workflow service passes the email to an SMTP server.

  4. The SMTP server 'sends' the email which is received by the recipient mail server.

  5. The recipient mail server forwards the email onto the intended recipient.

The following institution settings on the General (Cross-System) screen are used in this flow:

  • From e-mail address - this is the email address that emails will be sent from. Where possible, this should be an actual mailbox that exists in the institution (for example: <mailbox>@<institute>.co.uk).

    Some email communications can override this setting (for example: email templates).

  • SMTP mail server for sending emails - this is the address of the institute's SMTP server that relays the emails.

  • SMTP mail server port

  • SMTP mail server username

  • SMTP mail server password

  • SMTP mail server uses SSL - defines whether the SMTP server uses SSL.

Possible email issues and resolutions are described in the following table.

Issue Suggested resolution steps
No emails arrive for any recipients

Carry out the following checks:

  • Check the ebs workflow service is running.

    ebs can only confirm that an email has been successfully sent to the SMTP server. What happens from that point onwards is not tracked.

  • Check the workflow service's route to the SMTP server is not blocked by a firewall.

  • Check the SMTP server is running and can communicate externally.
Emails arrive for some recipients, but not all As some emails have arrived, the email system is working. It is likely that the recipient mail server has either blocked the mail or marked it as spam and filed it into a junk folder. Try ensuring that the 'from' address set in ebs is a valid email address, as some mail systems block mails from unregistered addresses.
Mail fails to arrive to a specific domain (for example: @gmail.com, @<institute>.ac.uk, and so on)

Carry out the following checks:

  • Confirm that other domains can receive mails to prove that the system is working.

  • Check that the SMTP server has no restrictions in place sending mails to the specific domain.

  • If the failed emails are to a @<institute>.ac.uk domain, check that the recipient mail server is not blocking the emails.