Topic: Send Receipts, any way of enabling them?

[jptechnical]

I read in an older forum post that qmail does not support send receipts or receipt notification. (http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=32564.0) Is that still the case, or is there a way of enabling this? I found out that one user on my first new install of SME lives and dies by send receipts.

I am really starting to miss postfix...  but I am sure there are some really good reasons SME is using qmail... I just haven't researched them yet ... I happen to really like my comfort zone.

It looks like, at passing glance, that qmail will do send receipts, but maybe that just means locally, not to internet recipients?

http://cr.yp.to/qmail.html
Local delivery (qmail-local):

    * user-controlled address hierarchy---fred controls fred-anything
    * mbox delivery
    * reliable NFS delivery (maildir)
    * user-controlled program delivery: procmail etc. (qmail-command)
    * optional new-mail notification (qbiff)
    * optional NRUDT return receipts (qreceipt)
    * conditional filtering (condredirect, bouncesaying)

[CharlieBrady]

It looks like, at passing glance, that qmail will do send receipts, but maybe that just means locally, not to internet recipients?

qreceipt will only be invoked if you specifically add it to your users' .qmail files (by way of a custom user template) and would only have any effect for messages which contain a Notice-Requested-Upon-Delivery-To header field (which is essentially no messages).

See http://www.ezmlm.org/man/man1/qreceipt.1.html.

This is probably not what you are looking for.

[mmccarn]

Are you looking for read receipts - returned to the sender when the recipient opens the email, or something else such as a delivery receipt - which the mail server  returns to the sender as soon as it hands off the message to another host?

I've seen the latter on Exchange servers;  I ask just for clarification...

[jptechnical]

Receipt on reading the message, however, I would take either one. I just need for one user to get an ack that a message was delivered, it is a law firm and they want to know when a trustee has received an email from them. Thanks.

[warren]

Receipt on reading the message,

On sending the message from your mail client ( thunderbird) select  options, return receipt;
on Outlook express select , tools Request Read receipt;

Note however, that the recipient can choose to " not Reply on receipt of the mail" to the return receipt;

[cactus]

Note however, that the recipient can choose to " not Reply on receipt of the mail" to the return receipt;

Indeed there is no way of knowing for sure your intended recipient actually read the mail, not for legal purposes as this depends on far too much uncertain factors:

• user might choose to deny the read receipt request
• mail client might not support such a feature
• you are not certain it was the intended recipient or some one with access to his/her mail(box)
• some clients prompt a read request before you actually have gotten the chance to read it, mostly to do with selecting the message when auto-previews are enabled.

To go short I would not dare rely on this legally.

[jptechnical]

Well then, for piece of mind, is there any way of providing some kind of delivery receipt with SME? I guess, if it came to it, I could archive the mail logs... but I don't know how I would go about that or if it would be worth it.

Any ideas that I can give to my client, because I know they won't like the answer I have for them now.

[cactus]

Any ideas that I can give to my client, because I know they won't like the answer I have for them now.

I unerstand they will not buy it, but you can not instruct a server to request read receipts as this is a mail client setting and as explained before not waterproof.
So you will have to advise your client to look for another solution for delivering their messages when they want to be sure that they are read by the (intended) recipient as e-mail, for this purpose is no solid basis for legal procedures, because of its nature, let alone read receipts.

[warren]

it is a law firm and they want to know when a trustee has received an email from them.

As a law firm, they should realise that the only way to ensure that something is read by the recipeint, is to have him "physically" sign for the message, as in its delivered by courier / registered article ect, where the recipient is required to provide proof of his identity in order to colect /receive the item.

Even then , the person could sign for the article and still not actually read it !

[jptechnical]

Ok, now I am confused (it doesn't take much).

I setup outlook03 with a test sme box, and sent myself an email from horde with a different account and request read receipt, then got the notification on the outlook client, and accepted the receipt, then I recieved the notification in horde.

So, didn't a forum post explicitly say that read receipts are NOT supported by qmail? I remember reading that very specifically. Has a new version of qmail come out and that feature is now included? Any idea why it is working now for me in test, but not for my client accross town?

I am seriously going crazy, i need a drink

[pfloor]

Have you taken into consideration that you can set your client to totally ignore the read and received receipts?  If you disable them, you will never even see the read reply request at all.

This is yet another reason why receipts are totally useless.