Error Sending Email To Newly Created Mailbox

Question

I have a Business Rule in place that after a new user is created, will create an Exchange mailbox for the user, set the Retention Policy for the user, then send them a welcome email. The welcome email action keeps failing with the following error:

Resolving value references in the notification recipient address '%mail%' resulted in an empty string. There are no recipients specified.

However, when I look at the user after they are created and the action fails, their %mail% attribute is populated with the correct email address for the user. Is this maybe just a timing issue or something?

Answer 1

Hello,

The thing is that when an AD operation triggers Business Rules, Adaxes collects all the Business Rules that will be triggered by a particular operation and resolves all the value references used in them. Only after that, Adaxes starts executing actions, and the value references are not recalculated. Since it is the Business Rule that creates a mailbox for the new user, the Email property is empty before executing the Rule, when value references are resolved.

To workaround this, you can use on of the two available options:

1. In your Business Rule, you can send an e-mail using a PowerShell script. In the script, you can use the IADs::Get method to get the current value of the Email property. If the script follows after creation of the mailbox, the method will return the address set for the user.

   For information on how to use the method, see subsection Using $Context.TargetObject in the following SDK article: http://www.adaxes.com/sdk/?ServerSideScripting.html.

   For information on how to send e-mails with the help of a script, see section Sending Emails and SMS.

   To run a PowerShell script as a part of a Business Rule, you can use the Run a program or PowerShell script action.
   

2. Alternatively, you can create a Business Rule triggered After Creating an Exchange mailbox for the User and send the e-mail using that Rule. In such a case, the value references for the Business Rule will be resolved after creating a mailbox.
   

   

Comments

I'm having a problem with this as well and I can't seem to use method two to fix it. I have a business rule where after creating a mailbox, it sends an email to an admin that a new mailbox was created and also sends a welcome email to the new mailbox. I get the admin email but the mailbox never receives the welcome email even though adaxes shows it was executed. I've tried changing the To field to %mail% , %usersname%@domain.com, and %alias%@domain.com and nothing works. A custom task set up the same way and executed manually sends the welcome email fine. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Tim

---

Hello Tim,

How are mailboxes created, using a Business Rule or manually? Are they created in Exchange on premises or in Exchange Online?

---

I have the same issue as well using method two. The mailboxes are created using business rule and exchange is on Premises. Its almost like exchange isn't creating the mailbox fast enough so the Welcome email does not show up. I looked at exchange tracking and it pretty much says that the email address does not exist for the new user. Is there a way to delay the email for a couple minutes?

---

I have the same issue and this is what I suspected as well.

---

Hello,

You can add a delay in this case. To add a delay, add the Run a program or PowerShell script action to your Business Rule with the following script:

Start-Sleep -s 10

This will add a delay of 10 seconds. If that's not enough, try increasing the interval.

---

Awesome I will give this a try.

---

This works as intended.

Thank you very much.

---

Sorry to dig up an old post.

While this method works most of the time sometimes it doesnt(especially when the mailbox is created at a remote site). I can add more time on the delay but the longer delay we add the longer time the IT team has to sit on the creating user screen after clicking create. After hitting create we have to wait 2+ min until the steps are done on teh backend. I have the start-sleep script set at 120 seconds.

Is there a way to have the welcome email set to send even later and not having the IT team sitting at the creating screen?

---

Hello,

Yes, it is possible. You need to use a Business Rule triggering After Creating an exchange mailbox for a User. To create the rule:

1. Launch Adaxes Administration Console.
2. Right-click your Adaxes service node, navigate to New and click Business Rule.
   
3. On step 2 of the Create Business Rule wizard, select User Object type.
4. Select After Creating an exchange mailbox for a User and click Next.
   
5. Click Add Action.
6. Select Send e-mail notification.
7. In the To field, enter %mail%.
8. Specify the notification subject and message text and click OK.
   
9. Click Next and finish creating the Business Rule.

---

Back to this again. This is still not working correctly. Is there a way to get the "welcome" email I have setup to send 5 min or so later without having the IT person sitting at the creating mailbox screen?

I have done the start-sleep setting but it seems that is ignored and the email is trying to be sent right away all while the tech is sitting at the creating screen?

The issue we have is still, when the user is on a remote exchange server the welcome email never makes it to the mailbox because the mailbox had not been created yet on the remote server. For the local server the mailbox gets created pretty fast.

Is there something else I can do?

---

Hello,

Could you post here or send us (support[at]adaxes.com) a screenshot of the Business Rule you have?

---

Hello

Exchange lives it's own life and I had to insert a "Start-Sleep -Seconds 60" before sending the welcome mail - to ensure, that the new user's mailbox (and mail address) was created and ready on our Exchange server.

I create the personal mailbox using powershell running as a Custom Command, after creating the user.

As an alternative to the sleep command, you could use a loop routine (with a safety exit switch), that probes if the mailbox is ready. This may reduce the time you must wait before the job completes.

Hope that helps.