CRM

dsogo
Member

bcc to log emails stopped working while forwarding is fine.

SOLVE

Starting a few days ago, bcc emails from Outlook stopped logging in HubSpot, while forwarded emails continue to work fine.  Everything was working previously, we did not change any user email addresses.   Same problem across all users in our account.   Thanks!

 

 

0 Upvotes
1 Accepted solution
martsyn
Solution
Member

bcc to log emails stopped working while forwarding is fine.

SOLVE

@jennysowyrda, here's message from our support team:

 

 

Hi Alex,

We strip Message ID from the Internet egress server for outbound
emails to the Internet. That configuration has been like that for
couple of years - I reviewed it with my team. Message ID contains
internal host name which becomes an attack vector, that's why it is
being stripped for security reason.

I think that it is possible that Hubspot might have implemented a
recent change/restriction to stop accepting mails without a Message
ID.

Please take note that mail delivery/acceptance doesn't rely on the
presence or absence of a Message ID (it is an optional attribute).
When a receiving mail system doesn't find a message ID, it generates
its own.

I'm including the headers from recent and old (7months to 15 months
ago) emails that I sent to external recipients. The external messaging
systems assigns their own Message ID.

He then proceeded to include few samples from external-bound emails, like hotmail and gmail where receiving servers created their own message IDs. Some of those emails dated beginning of 2016. I can include those in private message if you wish.

 

 

This shows two points: 

1. Unlike other mail servers, Hubspot incorrectly handles properly formatted emails.

2. This problem was introduced by Hubspot sometime in May, a few weeks before the issue was raised by my coworker in this forum thread.

 

Please get back to that lazy developer that told you to shuffle me to "ideas" forum to look in to the code changes that introduced this BUG sometime mid-May. The problem is clear and I consider that all of us have spent too much effort for this to be just thrown away due to their incompetence and laziness.

View solution in original post

0 Upvotes
42 Replies 42
martsyn
Member

bcc to log emails stopped working while forwarding is fine.

SOLVE

@jennysowyrda, I added my gmail address as my another address in hubspot and BCC feature works. So it's something between our servers. I tested BCC on our Outlook/Exchange server separately and it works as expected and we rely on it every day, so no surprises there.

 

I think it's about how hubspot is handling messages sent from us. I tried different formats and none of them show up in contact's communication stream. It's not plain/html/rich text formats because I tried all of them. It's not base64 encoding on top of those formats because when I switch my Outlook from UTF-8 to ASCII emails are no longer base64 encoded, yet nothing shows up in hubspot.

 

If you have more ideas to experiment with, please let me know. Please reach out to me directly if you think it'll speed up the troubleshooting. Thank you

0 Upvotes
jennysowyrda
Community Manager
Community Manager

bcc to log emails stopped working while forwarding is fine.

SOLVE

@martsyn are you able to get the headers from the sent email in Outlook ollowing these instructions? Having this information would be very helpful. If your version of Outlook is not covered in the article, can you please let me know which version of Outlook (2010, 2016, etc.) you are using? 

 

You can send the email header through a message again. 

 

Thank you,

Jenny

0 Upvotes
martsyn
Member

bcc to log emails stopped working while forwarding is fine.

SOLVE

@jennysowyrda, like I said before, these instructions are for the messages received by Outlook. When I follow these instructions for sent messages, the internet headers textblock is blank:

hubspotBlankInternetHeaders.png 

So that's why I private-messaged you the resulting raw source (including headers) of the message received by my yahoo mailbox (repka_at_ymail.com) so that you can see what's being sent. For obvious reasons these headers do not contain a line with your BCC address, but trust me, it's there. If you want, I can send an email with any other mailbox you tell me in BCC field along with 2311372@bcc.hubspot.com so that you can see inspect the message yourself.

 

We use Outlook 2013 (mostly), Outlook 2010 and Exchange server's web interface here. BCC functionality works with neigher of those . Whether with or without hubspot extensions.

0 Upvotes
jennysowyrda
Community Manager
Community Manager

bcc to log emails stopped working while forwarding is fine.

SOLVE

@martsyn if the headers are showing as blank within Outlook, they can be accessed by your IT team. Do you have an IT team you can reach out to for the headers? 

 

Additionally, can you take a screenshot of an email in the sent folder of your Outlook showing the bcc address? The bcc address should populate in the recipients area of the originally sent email. The more evidence that I can gather that shows the bcc address is populating within Outlook, the more expedited this troubleshooting process will be.

 

I appreciate your patience while we work on this issue for you. 

 

Thank you, 

Jenny

0 Upvotes
martsyn
Member

bcc to log emails stopped working while forwarding is fine.

SOLVE

@jennysowyrda, I talked to our IT team and they confirmed that Exchange server does not store sent messages in the format you're talking about that would allow seeing headers and referred me to grab them from the receiving mailbox.

 

I saved the message in proprietary Exchange/Outlook .msg format and here it is: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4EaYG9f-4NYY2EtamZBQThSZlk

 

If you open it with outlook, you'll see the populated BCC field.

0 Upvotes
bonniefitzsmith
Contributor

bcc to log emails stopped working while forwarding is fine.

SOLVE

I have exactly the same problem.  Suddenly stopped working today - no changes to anything in what I'm doing.  Just putting my hubspot bcc email address in the bcc field.

 

The crm has already lost a ton of usefulness because I can't send email from within the crm and have to manually (ugh) send individual emails one by one from my outlook account.

 

If now bcc field is also not working to log my emails and which makes it look like my last date of contact to my contacts was like a year ago, which then raises all kinds of alarm bells, when in reality I just sent them all, (tediously, one by one) emails, then that is way too much to manually manage.

0 Upvotes
jennysowyrda
Community Manager
Community Manager

bcc to log emails stopped working while forwarding is fine.

SOLVE

Hi @bonniefitzsmith

 

If you can follow the troubleshooting steps I've outlined above, I am happy to take a look (you can send me message headers following the instructions I've directed @martsyn to). Let me know if you have any questions about how to get those. 

 

We need the email headers not as proof that the issue is occuring, but because the email headers provide insight into the process of how the information in your email, such as the body content, bcc address, cc addess, etc, is being transferred from the sending inbox to the recipient's inbox, and to see where the bcc is falling off the receiving end. The more information we have, the quicker the issue can be diagnosed. If the bcc is not working, we need as much insight into the process of your email being sent as possible, including screenshots and email headers, to see what is occurring between your email being sent off and your email not being logged in HubSpot. 

 

If you can send me the headers @bonniefitzsmith I can advise on next steps. The troubleshooting steps are outlined above. 

0 Upvotes
martsyn
Member

bcc to log emails stopped working while forwarding is fine.

SOLVE

@jennysowyrda, let me know if you need more info from me. Do not hesitate to contact me directly, I've PMed you my phone number. I can work with developers to troubleshoot this. And doing this in real-time would be less frustrating than twice-a-week question/answer progress (or lack of thereof in my eyes).

 

I understand your 'no phone support to free users', but by screenshots and files I've uploaded hopefully I've proven that this is not an issue with my company's mail configuration. Besides, I can't recommend my team paying for what looks to me a malfunctioning product.

0 Upvotes
martsyn
Member

bcc to log emails stopped working while forwarding is fine.

SOLVE

Also, unlike @bonniefitzsmith, none of emails we BCC through our Exchange server reach hubspot client profiles. As I said before, gmail works.

0 Upvotes
jennysowyrda
Community Manager
Community Manager

bcc to log emails stopped working while forwarding is fine.

SOLVE

Hi @martsyn

 

I've heard back from our developers after examining the new headers, and it is the lack of a message ID that is preventing HubSpot from caputing those emails and pushing them to your CRM. For most inboxes, it is standard practice to have a message ID in the email that is sent out. And it is this message ID that allows the message to be logged in the CRM. If you examine your Gmail header, there is a message ID, which is why those emails are able to be logged in the CRM. The message ID is something that is generated by your email provider, not HubSpot, but it is required for HubSpot to connect the email to your portal. 

 

Next steps would be reaching out to your email provider and inquiring as to why there are not message IDs being generated for your emails. 

 

If you are able to get message IDs associated with your emails, the emails will be able to log to the CRM. 

 

Thank you,

Jenny

0 Upvotes
martsyn
Member

bcc to log emails stopped working while forwarding is fine.

SOLVE

@jennysowyrda, your devs should not expect Message-Id field to be there.

 

According to RFC 2822 (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2822😞

 

Though optional, every message SHOULD have a "Message-ID:" field.

And if you look up what capital SHOULD means in RFCs, you'll see that it's analogous to RECOMMENDED. That is, it is not mandatory. So there's nothing wrong with email system not sending message IDs. Systems that require them for their internal use, generate them on their side, just like gmail messages that I've sent you before.

 

I've reached out to the email team and they say there's nothing they can do to turn on Message-Id generation.

 

Chances are that we are not the only client who has/will have this problem with you. We are the first client who noticed this and helped you diagnosing this. You can shove this under carpet, but I recommend you change your logic to generate your own unique message ID when you receive messages missing one. Or perhaps you can fallback to Thread-Index field.

 

I'll be happy to help you troubleshoot this if you choose to adjust your logic handling these messages. Thank you

 

0 Upvotes
Ignite_Nikki
Member

bcc to log emails stopped working while forwarding is fine.

SOLVE

Hubspot is a joke. 

 

IS THIS FIXED YET? DID ANYONE SOLVE THIS?? 

 

Same problem

 

0 Upvotes
bonniefitzsmith
Contributor

bcc to log emails stopped working while forwarding is fine.

SOLVE

And mine are here and still don't always show up

Screen Shot 2017-07-19 at 2.30.25 PM.png

 

 

0 Upvotes
jennysowyrda
Community Manager
Community Manager

bcc to log emails stopped working while forwarding is fine.

SOLVE

@martsyn thank you for sharing your input regarding the message IDs. While they may not be required by other systems, they are required by HubSpot to get the information into your portal. As our system is set up at the moment, the message IDs are a required piece of information. If you would like to see a change in HubSpot, I can work with you to create an idea in our ideas forum using the information we've gathered. The ideas forum will allow the developers to see your idea, will allow other users to vote for your idea (so if other users have the same email inbox configuration, they will see the idea and upvote it), and will increase the likelihood of this being implemented in the future. 

 

I can work with you to ensure that the idea is as detailed as possible which will help the developers know exactly what you would like to see implemented. 

 

@bonniefitzsmith as your headers are showing up, and your bcc is working occasionally, your situation is different. I am working with my team to investigate the root cause of your sporadic bcc issue. 

 

Thanks! 

0 Upvotes
martsyn
Solution
Member

bcc to log emails stopped working while forwarding is fine.

SOLVE

@jennysowyrda, here's message from our support team:

 

 

Hi Alex,

We strip Message ID from the Internet egress server for outbound
emails to the Internet. That configuration has been like that for
couple of years - I reviewed it with my team. Message ID contains
internal host name which becomes an attack vector, that's why it is
being stripped for security reason.

I think that it is possible that Hubspot might have implemented a
recent change/restriction to stop accepting mails without a Message
ID.

Please take note that mail delivery/acceptance doesn't rely on the
presence or absence of a Message ID (it is an optional attribute).
When a receiving mail system doesn't find a message ID, it generates
its own.

I'm including the headers from recent and old (7months to 15 months
ago) emails that I sent to external recipients. The external messaging
systems assigns their own Message ID.

He then proceeded to include few samples from external-bound emails, like hotmail and gmail where receiving servers created their own message IDs. Some of those emails dated beginning of 2016. I can include those in private message if you wish.

 

 

This shows two points: 

1. Unlike other mail servers, Hubspot incorrectly handles properly formatted emails.

2. This problem was introduced by Hubspot sometime in May, a few weeks before the issue was raised by my coworker in this forum thread.

 

Please get back to that lazy developer that told you to shuffle me to "ideas" forum to look in to the code changes that introduced this BUG sometime mid-May. The problem is clear and I consider that all of us have spent too much effort for this to be just thrown away due to their incompetence and laziness.

0 Upvotes
MayPascaud
HubSpot Alumni
HubSpot Alumni

bcc to log emails stopped working while forwarding is fine.

SOLVE

 Hi @martsyn, thanks for your response. I am jumping in here as Jenny is going to be out of the office for the next couple of days. There is a lot to dig into, so I will be addressing each of your points one by one. 

 

1. You are correct in that a change was made a couple of months ago in the way that HubSpot handles email logging. At that time, we stopped logging mail that did not contain message ids, because we rely on these ids to uniquely identify emails. I will go into this further below. 

 

2. While the presence of message ids in emails is indeed optional, it is highly unusual for email systems not to use them - their use is almost universal accross email clients, and they are a widely accepted standard. In fact, the RFC 2822 Internet standards track protocol (a standard specifying a syntax for text messages that are sent between computer users) specifically states in section 3.6.4:

Though optional, every message SHOULD have a "Message-ID:" field.
   Furthermore, reply messages SHOULD have "In-Reply-To:" and
   "References:" fields as appropriate, as described below.   

Not having a message ID will cause issues with more systems than just HubSpot. For example, SpamAssasin, a widely used spam filtering program, has a rule against messages without message IDs which states:

The message does not contain a Message-Id header. The relevant standards specify that mails should have Message-Id headers. All properly written Mail User Agent (or Mail Submission Agent) software is expected to add a Message-Id header.
This suggests that the mail was sent by badly-configured mailout software rather than by a normal email client.

Additional discussion on the lack of message ids in emails on Stack Overflow here

 

3. Because of the widely accepted use of message ids in outgoing emails, HubSpot made the decision to only support the logging of emails that contain message ids. This was a decision made by our development team, in order to streamline, facilitate, and make more efficient the email logging process. Nowhere is it stated that we will support the logging of emails that do not contain message ids. This is not a bug in the software; it was a decision that was made by the development team, which reflects the current state of email best practices.

 

In terms of the reasoning behind this decision: without message ids, the logging of replies, deduplication, and various other functionalities available in HubSpot Sales are not possible. In addition, without message IDs, we do not have any other way of uniquely identifying emails without adding a significant amount of additional work to this identification process.

 

On your support team's point that "When a receiving mail system doesn't find a message ID, it generates its own" - this actually isn't true in all cases, and doing so breaks many other useful aspects of having a message ID, because the message ID now becomes distinct between different users receiving the same email. This means that fields like In-Reply-To become no longer useful.

 

4. Finally, your support team also stated that "Message ID contains internal host name which becomes an attack vector". We aren't sure that we understand the concern here, as there is no requirement that message IDs contain the actual host name of the host generating the email - for example, HubSpot does not use our own host name in our message ids. In addition, this host is likely made public in other email headers.

 

Please let me know if you have any questions on the above, and I would be happy to dig into any of these point further with you.

 

All my best,

May

0 Upvotes
martsyn
Member

bcc to log emails stopped working while forwarding is fine.

SOLVE

@jennysowyrda, also FYI one of our last messages successfully received by Hubspot's BCC mailbox is on May 11th. I know for a fact that we did not have Message-Id headers in our outgoing messages for at least over a year. Therefore it appears to be a change on Hubspot's side that caused this issue.

0 Upvotes
martsyn
Member

bcc to log emails stopped working while forwarding is fine.

SOLVE

 

You cannot say "message IDs are required". It is up to IETF and ISOC Internet groups to dictate what is and is not required in email messages. Since the field is optional, the fact that your system cannot handle is a BUG. Ideas forum contains FEATURE requests, not bugs. And hoping that more users experiencing this will go through over a month of ungrateful diagnostic process that I went through to detect this bug on your side and search for this "idea" to upvote it is pointless.

0 Upvotes
bonniefitzsmith
Contributor

bcc to log emails stopped working while forwarding is fine.

SOLVE

Hi, i just sent the header from one of the email messages.  Let me now what you see.  All I see is that sometimes they go through and log and sometimes they don't and its a lot of try to keep track of.

0 Upvotes
martsyn
Member

bcc to log emails stopped working while forwarding is fine.

SOLVE

@bonniefitzsmith, do you use Outlook+Exchange combo? Which versions?

 

In the meantime they got me to take more screenshots, paste some more email headers, etc one more time as a "proof" that I'm not making this up. I guess, this is what you get as a free user.

 

I don't use this product personally, I just help out my team who I have a feeling gave up and stopped asking me about this since it has been going on for over a month. If they bring it up again, I'll tell them to pony up a paid subscription, otherwise, I'll just keep chugging away with posting couple of screenshots once a week or whatever this support here requests to pass on to their devs. If you have a paid subscription, I suggest you giving them a call. Please post your progress here.

 

I saw another post where BCC just magically started working for one user.

0 Upvotes
bonniefitzsmith
Contributor

bcc to log emails stopped working while forwarding is fine.

SOLVE

I use outlook for mac v 15.36 and outlook web app - neither seems to have any bearing on this issue.

What I have seen is that *sometimes* its takes a few hours for emails to get logged and there is no telling which will get logged. 

 

For example, yesterday:  I sent one and only one kind of email (but it takes hours because I have to personalize and send each one individually since the hubspot email integration is not longer supported - grrr.)  Anyway..emails that went out around 11:00am and earlier did not log, those that went out sometime before 3:30pm got logged and the same emails, sent after 3:30 did not log at all. Nothing different going on user-wise.  

 

0 Upvotes