Introduction
When a customer says an email never arrived, look first at the screen headed Sent Email Overview. It has one row for every email the app handed to its email service, newest first: the address, the subject, the booking or invoice number and when it was sent. An eye icon at the end of each row opens the full email. This page explains what that list proves, and the few ways an email can go missing without anyone seeing an error.
You will use this when:
- a customer is at the desk saying they never got their confirmation or invoice
- a customer says a payment link never came, and you want to see what was sent and when
- you pressed a button that said the email was sent, and the customer has nothing
- a confirmation is late and you want to know whether the app is still trying
- you are doing a quick check that this morning's invoices actually went out
Words this screen uses
| The screen says | It means |
|---|---|
| Sent Emails | The list of emails the app has handed over for delivery |
| Automated type booking | Which kind of automatic email it was, such as Booking confirmation |
| Automation type invoice | Which kind of invoice email it was: Manual, Fine or AggregatedInvoice |
| Email service | The outside company that delivers the app's email, called SendGrid. The app gives each email to SendGrid; SendGrid delivers it |
Use this page to trace a missing email. To set up or change the emails themselves, see Set up the emails the app sends by itself.
How to use
Configuration
There is nothing to switch on: every email the app hands to the email service is added to the list automatically. Two settings elsewhere decide whether an email can leave at all, and both are worth checking when email stops arriving:
- Check the sender address of each location. Emails about a booking are sent from the email of the booking's pick-up location, under the name of that location's branch. From the main menu open Admin, Product design, then the Locations tile, and open each location. Save refuses a location with no address (email is empty), but locations created before that check, or brought in by an import, can still have none.
- Check the Reply to of each invoice template. Emails from the Invoice templates (manual invoices, fines and combined invoices) are sent from the template's Reply to address instead. Open Admin, Communicator, Invoice, and open each template.
The email service account itself, and which sender addresses it accepts, is managed by RentVisie support, not on any screen in the app.
Before you start: the Sent Emails list is opened from the Communicator screen, which only someone with the Company admin role can open. Other staff can only see the emails for a payment request, from the booking; for anything else, ask your company admin.
Using the sent-email list
From the main menu open Admin, then Communicator. A screen with four tiles opens: Bookings, Invoice, Peppol and Sent Emails. Click Sent Emails.
- Find the email. Type the booking number in the filter box under Booking Number, or the invoice number under Invoice Number. You can also filter on To (part of an address is enough), Subject, or pick a day under Sent Date. The Branch Name column is usually empty; do not filter on it.
- Check the address. Compare To with the address the customer gave you. A typing error is easy to miss. Correct it on the customer record and send the email again.
- Open the email. Click the eye icon at the end of the row. The Sent Email View shows the kind of email, To, CC, BCC, Subject, Reply to (the address it was sent from) and the text exactly as it went out. Click Close or Back to return.
- If there is no row at all, the email was never handed over. Work through the first question in the Q&A at the bottom of this page.
- For a payment request, open the booking, go to the Payment Requests tab, and click the clock icon on the request's row. Payment request E-mail history lists every email sent for that request, including reminders. Any staff member can open this.
To send an email again, use the buttons on the booking's Emails tab or the steps in Find a document and send it again. The list has no resend button and cannot be edited.
Key details
What a row in the list proves
A row means the app handed the email to the email service. It does not mean the customer received it. After that the app hears nothing more: bounces (an address that does not exist, a full mailbox) and spam filters are not shown anywhere in the app. RentVisie support can look an email up in the email service's own records.
A timeout is recorded as sent. The app waits up to five minutes for the email service to answer. If the service answers with a refusal, no row is written. But if it does not answer in time, or the connection drops, the app treats that as success: it writes a row and, where you pressed a button, says the email was sent. So when the list shows an email and the customer insists nothing came, believe the customer and send it again.
Emails are queued, not instant
Most emails are not sent the moment you press a button. The app puts them in a waiting line and sends them one at a time, in the background, after making the document that goes with them. So a button can confirm before anything has been sent, and at a busy moment an email can take several minutes. It appears in the list only once it has been handed over.
The retry schedule
If making or sending an email fails with an error (for example, its document cannot be made), the app tries again by itself, waiting longer each time. A refusal by the email service is not an error in this sense and is not retried. Skim the table once:
| What sent the email | First retry after | Retries |
|---|---|---|
| Confirming a booking, a confirmation after an online payment, invoicing a booking, a lease's next invoice, emails requested through an outside booking system | About 2 minutes, then roughly doubling each time, up to once a day | 10 |
| Sending a quote, and some invoicing routes and pick-up and return forms | 30 seconds, then doubling | 5 |
| A customer accepting a quote online, or booking through self-service | 1 minute, then doubling | 3 |
| The reservation request when you save a provisional booking | 10 seconds, then doubling | 3 |
| Making a credit note on its own | 5 seconds, then doubling | 5 |
| Cancel with email, the Deposit Invoice button, the reservation-request email for a booking made on your website | No retry | — |
A worked example. You confirm booking 24117 at 10:00, and making the rental agreement fails. The app tries again at about 10:02, 10:06, 10:14 and 10:30, then around 11:02, 12:06, 14:14 and 18:30, and the next day at about 03:00 and again at about 20:00. If the cause is sorted out by 11:30, the 12:06 try succeeds and the confirmation appears in the list with 12:06 as its Sent Date. If it is never sorted out, the confirmation is dropped after the tenth try and nobody is told.
The cancellation email has no retry, so one failure loses it. After Cancel with email, check the list; if there is no row, send a manual email.
A blank or refused sender address
An automatic email about a booking is sent from the pick-up location's email. If that address is empty, or is one the email service will not send from, the service refuses the email. For emails sent in the background, no row is written and nobody sees a message; when you pressed the button yourself you see An error occured: with the reason, or Something went wrong. Please try again..! for invoice and document emails. Fix the address as described under Configuration, then send the email again.
A new language
A customer whose language has no template gets the template in your company's language, then the staff member's language, then the one with no language. So a newly added language produces no email only when none of those exists, or the one found is switched off. See Which template a customer gets in Set up the emails the app sends by itself.
What to do next: if the email is missing from the list, work through the Q&A below from the top. If it is in the list with the right address, send it again from the booking's Emails tab, and ask RentVisie support to check delivery if it goes missing twice.
Q&A
Why is there no row for a confirmation or invoice the customer should have had? Four causes leave no row. There is no active template for that kind of email: see Set up the emails the app sends by itself. The customer is excluded from that kind of email, and an exclusion leaves no trace: see Stop the app emailing a customer. The email service refused it, usually because of the sender address (see A blank or refused sender address above). Or it is still waiting in line or being retried; check again in ten minutes.
The list says the email was sent, but the customer has nothing. Why? A row only proves the app handed the email over, and a timeout is also recorded as sent. Check To for a typing error, ask the customer to look in their spam folder, and send it again from the booking's Emails tab. If a second attempt also goes missing, ask RentVisie support to look it up in the email service's records.
Why did I see "An error occured" and then "Email sent" straight after? The Payment Reminder and Sign document remote buttons always finish with Email sent, even when the email service refused the email a moment earlier, when no template exists (you then see No email template available. Please create a template first. first), or when the customer is excluded. Believe the first message. Check the list under Sent Emails: if there is no row, nothing went out.
Why did the Deposit Invoice button say "Sent!" but nothing arrived? Sent! only means the email was put in the waiting line. This email has no retry, so if the deposit invoice cannot be made, it is lost. Check the list after a few minutes and press Deposit Invoice again if there is no row.
I cancelled a booking with email; why did the customer not get the cancellation? The cancellation email is not retried, and it also needs an active Booking cancellation template. See the cancellation section of Cancel a booking and send a manual email instead.
Why does a confirmation arrive hours after the booking was confirmed? The first attempt failed and a later retry succeeded; see the worked example under The retry schedule. The Sent Date in the list is the moment of the successful attempt, not the moment you confirmed.
Why does the list not show the emails about a damage claim? Those have their own history on the damage claim. See Email an insurer or customer about a damage claim.
Why did a manual email show an error and leave no row? The window you write a manual email in reports every failure, including a timeout, and only records the email once it has really been accepted. See Send a customer an email from a booking.
Why can a colleague not find the Sent Emails tile? Communicator only appears for the Company admin role. A colleague without it can use the clock icon on the booking's Payment Requests tab for payment-request emails, or ask the company admin. Roles are set in Add an employee and set their permissions.
Related pages:
- Set up the emails the app sends by itself — templates, and which one a customer gets.
- Stop the app emailing a customer — exclusions, which block an email without adding a row.
- Send a customer an email from a booking — writing to a customer yourself.
- Send customers reminders before and after a rental — the emails the nightly run sends.
- Choose the language of a customer's documents and emails — set the customer's language.