Emails are not being sent by the web listener

Sometimes the patron may tell you that they are not receiving e-mails from Theatre Manager -or- you get a notification message in the morning that a number of emails have not been sent.

The first place to look is the Manage Pending/Unsent Emails screen to look at the error messages behind the emails that did not get sent. You can look at the error message column, or double click on individual emails to look at the error message tab.

The second possibility is that they requested a password reset for an email that does not exist. Refer to finding patrons who request password resets and claim they didn't get an email.

Based on what you find, you may need to take various actions below:

If their email address is correct, it may indicate a set up problem in the company preferences smtp settings.
Some emails may be for a future eblast, and since they have not been sent, you just need to wait until they go.
If there are many, look at an email on a case by case basis and fix the patron's email address if that is what looks to be wrong. you can gain insight from looking at the error message field.
Use the status button to mark older emails as 'done'.
Try to send some of them again if they are recent by marking them as 'not done'
Or a combo of the above.

Each day, you should review the email error log in Theatre Manager that displays any emails in error status. Errors can come from a few sources.

Check the Patron Email Address

Sometimes, an email won't be sent because the user spelled their email address wrong when setting it up in Theatre Manager. If this is the case, send a test email to the patron from your email client program (eg. Apple Mail or Outlook). If they receive it, then make sure that the primary email address on the patron record matches what they just gave you.

If you notice that the email address is blank in the error log, it means that the primary email address may not have been set for some reason. To fix those:

Open the patron record
Go to the Contact Info tab
Click on an email address (there probably is only one, but if there is more, select the most appropriate one)
Click on the Set Primary button to set that email address as the primary address
You may also have to edit the employee's preferences (the gear on the main toolbar) and set the SMTP settings, password, authentication, etc as required

Be sure to check the error log daily.

Check the email settings in Company Preference

An email is not sent to anybody unless the SMTP server settings in Setup->Company Preferences are correct. i.e. this must specify

a valid email address
SMTP mail server
SMTP port on the mail server (generally 25)
login account
user id and password (if required)
the StartTLS/SMTPS settings

These settings are should be similar to those in your email program such as outlook, entourage, apple mail, web mail, or whatever email client you are using. The email address is generally the outgoing boxoffice@myvenue.com or tickets@myvenue.com. Please decide on a generic email address for your venue as you do not want all rejected emails coming back to your personal account.

Once the settings are correct, use the 'Test Email' to send a test email from this account to yourself. Verify that the email was sent successfully at the bottom of the Company Preferences screen. If not, adjust the email server parameters until the email is sent successfully. If there is an error using the test email button, you will see the entire STMP dialog which should give you all the information needed to identify the issue.

If using gmail, you may need to use secure settings because Gmail is warning users if email comes over insecure servers and may not access email unless it is sent with TLS enabled.

In some cases, you will see errors like Unable to send email. SMTP: 550 ..... These typically mean that a setting needs adjusted on the SMTP server. Typical errors and actions are:

SMTP 535 - usually means that the password is incorrect.
SMTP 550 - usually means that the SMTP server will not allow relaying the email from the listener to the outside world. We see it most often with MS Exchange servers where somebody tightened down the security. This can be remedied by contacting your IT person, showing them the message and asking them to allow relay of emails from the listener to the outside. Alternatively, you may need to specify another SMTP server address
SMTP 5xx - For other SMTP errors, please read the entire message. This usually tells you why the email could not be sent. The mail box might not be reachable, or there may be no mailbox on the remote mail server for this user (eg: they changed or cancelled their email address).

Once Theatre Manager is able to send emails, then you should change emails in error to not done to send them.

Verify that Ports are open to the SMTP server

It may be one of the simplest answers to review the port settings in the firewall to ensure that they are open and allow access to the SMTP server.

If the ports are not open or there are firewall rules in place that prevent an email being sent, it wont get there no matter how hard we try.

Warning of pending emails that have not been sent yet

If you are receiving an error that emails have not been sent by the Web Listener, there are, at first, two possible conditions under which the emails may not have been sent. You can determine which condition is occurring by double clicking on the email in the Web Listener Email Log.

Condition #1 reports on those that are actually in error, and will give you the reason why the email was not sent. Examples include: an incorrect or 'bad' email address, an SMTP Error, Pause Email settings in Theatre Manager, or specific router ports that need to be opened.
Condition #2: refers to emails that are pending but may not have been sent yet. This results from either timed emails in a blast email setup, or notifications that are scheduled but have not yet reached their scheduled time to go out. If this is not expected (you do not have any scheduled 'future' email blasts or notifications), please verify that the web listeners are active.

This check happens during each login. Given that most venues send eblasts overnight, seeing something in the morning is indicative of possible issues from the night before.

Virus Application is Scanning Emails

When Theatre Manager sends an email it waits for a response from the outgoing mail server. If the mail server does not send back a reply within the timeout the email in Theatre Manager will be marked with a timeout error. The timeout is located in the Web Server button of Company Preferences in Theatre Manager. The most common cause for the mail server not sending a response back to Theatre Manager is a scan of the email before sending the email. Often this is caused by a Virus Scan of the email before it's sent out. This can happen at either the local machine level (applications such as Kaspersky) or be a part of the outing server software. Turning off the Virus Scan software for all outgoing email will resolve this issue.