Manage Comms Issues

What is a comms issue?

A communication issue (comms issue) is where a user on the system is unable to receive messages by one or more of their contact methods (email / sms / voice).

How do comms issues arise?

The Alert system is able to track and record Alert messages sent to users, which means that if a message is not sent successfully and “bounced back” to us, this is marked on that person’s account in the audit trail. Depending on the issue that has caused this, the system will then immediately (or after 3 temporary failures) suspend that contact method from being sent further messages and places the user in the “comms issues” list until the comms issue has been resolved.

Automatic response

If an email message fails to be delivered to a user, and if they also have an active mobile number on their account, the system will then send an sms to them, requesting an updated email address, and if this is provided their account will be updated and the comms issue removed automatically.

How to manually resolve comms issues?

You can view the users with comms issues for any area that you have access to from the 'members' option, using the area options button > 'view a list of comms issues', as below

1. In the list of users you will see their communications methods for their accounts, and which one of these has an issue.
2. You can then use the 'Audit Trail' option for that user to see the details of the message sending failure, most commonly this will be an issue with their email address or email settings.
3. The “Diagnostic Code” displayed here is what the Alert system receives back from the recipient’s email host. Depending on the code description, you should see whether the issue is a permanent one (such as where the email address no longer exists), or a temporary one, which may resolve itself (such as “mailbox full”).
4. If the issue is a temporary one, you may choose to reinstate the email address on the system. To do this, click on “full editor” for the person,  then use the 're-enable email' option, as below:

Reinstating the person’s email address means they will once again be able to have Alert emails sent to them and will take them out of the “comms issue” list.

Please be aware that if the issue recurs, they will once more appear on the comms issue list.

• If when you check someone’s account you see that there is an obvious issue with their email address (eg “Hotmail” spelt wrong), you can correct the email address. This will automatically send a new verification email to them and remove them from the comms issues list.

Common email error codes

5.1.0	Sender denied. Either the recipient address is incorrectly formatted, or the recipient couldn't be correctly resolved.
5.1.1	Bad destination mailbox address This error typically occurs when the sender of the message enters an incorrect email address of the recipient.
5.1.10	Email address / email domain is incorrect
5.2.2	Mailbox full
5.4.1	Email not accepted by recipient server
5.5.0	Mailbox unavailable. The recipient's domain is @hotmail.com or @outlook.com and it wasn't found
5.7.1	Delivery not authorized (often the message has been flagged as spam and not delivered)

Contacting comms issue users

If you wish to contact an individual with a comms issue, you can click the option to add them to your recipient list as normal, though they would only be reachable by any other contact methods that they have active on their account e.g. sms / voice.

If you have more than a couple of people with comms issues, you can send one message to all of them at the same time. To do this, click on the “add all comms issues in this area to recipient list” link which appears above the list of users.

This will add all the current comms issue people in your area to one list, to then send to using any of the other contact methods that they may have. Once your message has been sent people who receive it will be able to reply by whichever means they received it to let you know new contact details or confirm where issues may lie so that that contact method can be removed from their account. They may also choose to log in to their user account to amend their contact details as necessary.

If a comms issue cannot be corrected by any of the above means and they have no alternative contact methods, it may be relevant to then remove this account from the system entirely as they are unreachable by any method.