Reading the E-mail Log

The e-mail log answers a question that comes up constantly: did we send it, and what did it say?

Where to find it

Architect Panel → Activity:

• E-mail Log — every message sent, with its result
• Correspondence — letters and documents, logged separately

Architect Panel → Integration & Connections:

• E-mail Accounts — the accounts messages are sent through

What an entry holds

• When it was sent.
• Account — which sending account was used.
• Recipients.
• Subject, body and attachments — the message as sent.
• Result — whether the send succeeded.
• Log — the detail behind that result.
• Source — what in the platform caused it.
• Tracking code.

Why the whole message is kept

Because "we sent you an e-mail about this" is rarely the end of the conversation. What it actually said, which address it went to, and what was attached are the things in dispute.

Keeping the body also means a template change is visible in its effects — you can see what customers received last month, not what the current template would produce.

Sent is not delivered

A successful result means the platform handed the message to the sending account without error. It does not mean the recipient's server accepted it, and it certainly does not mean anybody read it.

Most "we never received it" cases involve a message the log shows as sent successfully. That narrows the problem to the address, the recipient's filtering, or their mailbox — which is useful, but it is not the same as proof of delivery. Say "we sent it at 14:02 to this address", not "you received it".

Source is the most underused field

It tells you what caused the message — which journey, task or action. When a customer receives something unexpected, or receives the same thing four times, source is what identifies the mechanism. Without it you are guessing which of several processes sends similar messages.

Check the address, not just the result

The commonest cause of a missing e-mail is a wrong address that was sent to perfectly successfully. Read the recipient carefully — transposed characters in a domain are easy to skim past — and if it is wrong, the Activity Log will tell you when and by whom it was entered.

The log contains correspondence

Subjects, bodies and attachments are the actual content of your communications with people. That makes this one of the more sensitive stores in the platform.

Restrict access accordingly and give it a retention period. An e-mail log kept indefinitely is an indefinite archive of everything you have ever said to anybody.

Worked example

A customer says they never received an appointment confirmation. The log shows it sent successfully to an address one character out. The Activity Log shows that address was entered during a call three weeks earlier. The address is corrected, the message resent, and the agent is shown how it happened — the whole enquiry taking about four minutes.

Recommendations

• Distinguish sent from delivered when answering customers.
• Read the recipient address carefully before investigating anything else.
• Use the source field to identify what sent a message.
• Set retention and restrict access — this is correspondence.