Tips to ensure successful delivery of xMatters email notifications

Are you experiencing xMatters email notifications being delayed, failing to be delivered, or ending up in a junk folder?

When a major incident occurs, xMatters can send out a lot of notifications in a very short time. This can sometimes be flagged as spam behavior by corporate email servers and spam filtering services. This article includes tips that you, or your IT department, can take to ensure that your emails are delivered promptly.

1. Add the xMatters alert domain to internal trusted domains policies.

Depending on your email server and configuration, you may need to explicitly add the xMatters alert domain to your trusted policies list.

2. Add the xMatters email address space to the end-user Not Spam list.

Most email applications - online and desktop - can scan for what they consider spam, and move suspicious email to a 'Junk' or 'Spam' folder within the application.

Users can usually create a rule within their email application that will designate any messages coming from the xMatters alert system as not spam, so it will be delivered to the appropriate inbox folder. The process for doing this varies by application.

3. Add the xMatters email address space to third-party spam filter services as a trusted email.

Examples of third-party spam filter services include IRONPORT, Baraccuda, SOPHOS, Symantec, SendGrid, McAfee AntiSpam, etc. These solutions often share the same filters to protect companies from malicious email.

4. Add xMatters as a trusted email to internal email spam appliance.

Depending on the configuration of your email server and any internal spam appliance, you may need to explicitly add xMatters as a trusted email source.

Troubleshooting email notification issues:

If you're still experiencing problems with xMatters email notifications after implementing the above recommendations, try these troubleshooting steps:

1. Check event logs

Review the event logs in your xMatters account (Reports > Recent Events) to confirm if emails are being sent and to identify any specific event IDs with notification failures.

2. Look for bounce-back messages

Check if you're receiving any bounce-back or non-delivery notifications in your email system that might indicate why messages aren't being delivered.

3. Verify workflow configuration

If you're using email-initiated alerts, verify the workflow's configuration and test it manually to ensure it's properly set up.

4. Contact your internal IT team

Consult with your IT department about any potential email filtering or blocking mechanisms that might prevent xMatters emails from reaching your inbox.

5. Contact xMatters support

If issues persist, contact xMatters support with specific details such as event IDs, user information, and any error messages you've encountered. Some issues may be temporary and resolve on their own.

Additional notes for IT admins:

Email domain blocking

Occasionally an entire company email space will be added to a centralized email blocking list, as a result of a compromised user account relaying spam messages for some period of time. To prevent accidental blocking, add the inbound xMatters email address space to your trusted domain list.

Email authentication tools

There are a growing number of email verification tools available (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, etc.) that can be used to help troubleshoot mail delivery issues. Before calling xMatters support, it's useful to check the mail DNS, SMTP, and SPF records and see if you can work backwards to identify the issue.

xMatters reference: DTN-5186 Information supplied by Michael Casinha