How to get copy sent to me of all customer order-related emails?

[alwayspaws]

How can I automatically get a copy of all the order related emails sent to the customers?

[alwayspaws]

This is a serious question for me.

[yaniv14]

Whats wrong with the merchant copy? its almost the same.

[alwayspaws]

I want to tweak it a little bit. Why does it have to have brackets around my store name in the subject?

Also I’m trying to confirm that these emails are actually being sent so if I get a copy I know it sent. Presently I only get email notifying me of an order. That doesn’t mean that my customer is getting these updates when I update the status in the order section.

Please correct me if I’m looking at this the wrong way. :-)

[30knees]

I agree - some customers have told me information is missing in their emails, eg bank details. It would be great to get the exact same email the customer gets, even if it's just looking at the email under Advanced Parameters>E-mail.

[alwayspaws]

Thanks @30knees If you send updates and don’t hear anything back, you don’t know whether it’s received or in spam. Or even if it went out.

[dynambee]

I agree that receiving copies of the mails sent out would be helpful to store owners, especially during the process of setting up a new store. There is a PS module that does this. However 30bz has revamped the email sending system so I have doubts about if this module will work.

There was also a user in the PS forums asking about this same issue who solved it himself with a single line of code. I tried to figure out where to apply similar code in 30bz but have not had much luck.

Thanks @30knees If you send updates and don’t hear anything back, you don’t know whether it’s received or in spam. Or even if it went out.

Receiving a copy of the message will mean you know with reasonable certainty that a copy was also sent to the customer. However you still won't know if the customer actually received the message, and you won't know if it has been tagged as spam by the customer's mail system.

You can test the likelihood of being tagged as spam by testing the 30bz mails with a system like this.

It's not the easiest thing in the world to test though as the mail you want to test must be sent to the randomly generated email address. It's possible, you just have to change your test customer's email address to be the address they want you to use, and then have your 30bz site send the mail you want to have checked.

I will certainly be doing this but it's really something everyone needs to do with their own site as much of the score depends on how the mails are sent and how the sending domain is set up.

[dynambee]

After monkeying around with grep for a bit I think that perhaps this is the file that needs to be edited: /vendor/swiftmailer/swiftmailer/lib/classes/Swift/Plugins/RedirectingPlugin.php

It's the only place I could find that uses the addTo function. If this is the right file then the following is the code that I think should be added after line 123, becoming the new line 124:

$message->addBcc('[email protected]');

I haven't tested this yet, and as always, editing the core files is not recommended and edits will likely be lost after upgrades and need to be reapplied. I will test it out in the next day or two and report back.

If it does work then the result would be the BCC email address specified would receive a copy of all emails sent by the 30bz swift mailer.

[yaniv14]

I guess it will be better to override the Send function in Mail.php to add a static bcc address. Never tested it but I think it should work, just create an override to the entire function and set a default bcc instead of null. You can probably just call the parent function and modify the bcc, but I rather check it before posting here.

[dynambee]

I'd sooner send all mail through my own SMTP server so I don't have to configure DKIM (etc etc) for multiple IP addresses. Especially having multiple store domains it is much easier to use a single outbound mail server.

[dynambee]

After much mucking about:

1. Adding that line to the RedirectingPlugin.php file seems to have no effect. If anyone else has an idea I'm certainly up for testing it. We would also like to get BCC of all outbound mails.

2. If you are going to use your own SMTP server then be sure to enter the correct email address in the 30bz /Preferences/Store Contacts settings area. The email address you enter in the Store Contacts area is the email address all emails seem to be sent from. If this email does not match at least the domain of the SMTP account you are using then your connection will probably be refused by your SMTP server. Not only refused but with no information given as to why the connection was refused. Took me a while to figure out WTF was going wrong... :(

[DaoKakao]

I use nullmailer. It is very easy to install, tune it to forward mails wherever you need, et c. Unfortunately, it is not for shared hosting :(

Another option could be mail alias+dns mail hosting. I don't know about google, but it could be strange if they don't provide such feature. Anyway there're alot of mail services providing email hosting for free with mail aliases. Shortly: having the alias address, [email protected], when someone sends a mail on it, this alias sends copy of that mail for all members of alias address. In your case it could be [email protected], which sends as much copies, as real email addresses are members of that alias list.

[dynambee]

I think you may have misunderstood the issue at hand, @DaoKakao.

30bz sends out lots of emails to customers. Order confirmations, shipping confirmations, welcome emails, etc etc. What @alwayspaws would like (and me too) is to receive a BCC of all of those outbound mails. One message might go to [email protected] while the next message could be to [email protected]. No matter who the message is actually being sent to a BCC needs to be added to the message to send a copy to [email protected].

[alwayspaws]

@dynambee That’s exactly what I want. Thanks for expressing it so clearly!

[yaniv14]

That's exactly what I've posted above.

[DaoKakao]

In TB's email setting there's a switch called "Log emails". Is it not enough for that purpose?

[dynambee]

@daokakao said in How to get copy sent to me of all customer order-related emails?:

In TB's email setting there's a switch called "Log emails". Is it not enough for that purpose?

"Log emails" does not show the email itself and the log entry also doesn't mean that the email was actually sent, only that 30bz thinks it was sent.

Customers also have a habit of replying to emails and it can be very useful to have an actual copy of the email the customer received so that when they reply with questions the message (and whatever might have been wrong with the message) is clear.

[DaoKakao]

Come on ,folks! The task is trivial. TB has the options for SMTP and IMAP servers. As i told above - why not to bind your MX record to google or some other third party mail provider? You definitely will have access to all needed mail

[30knees]

@daokakao So basically setting up tb to not use something like Elastic email but go through the email provider of your choice?

[dynambee]

@daokakao said in How to get copy sent to me of all customer order-related emails?:

Come on ,folks! The task is trivial.

There is no need to be rude.

TB has the options for SMTP and IMAP servers.

Where does 30bz have an option for IMAP? I see only SMTP for outbound mails. IMAP would certainly solve this problem perfectly and that is how I send all our automated mails now.

As i told above - why not to bind your MX record to google or some other third party mail provider? You definitely will have access to all needed mail

There are many reasons to run your own SMTP server. One big reason is spam. When sharing an outbound SMTP IP with millions of other users (such as when using Google) your messages are more likely to be tagged as spam. I have been using Google Apps for many years -- we have dozens of domains with the no-longer-available free of charge "standard edition" as well as a number of domains with the pay-per-account "business edition" -- and higher numbers of our messages being tagged as spam is a real problem. With this in mind we have joined the increasing number of people who are moving away from shared mail hosting.

[dynambee]

@mdekker said in How to get copy sent to me of all customer order-related emails?:

That is what I always recommend, too. The sent folder will show us all the mails that have been sent to customers. But it is not an option for everyone, hence the option to duplicate/BCC the mails.

When entering the outbound email settings on 30bz I see only an option to configure outbound SMTP. Is there an option for IMAP that I am missing?

[DaoKakao]

@30knees said in How to get copy sent to me of all customer order-related emails?:

So basically setting up tb to not use something like Elastic email but go through the email provider of your choice?

When you starting real business (eg trading) you'll need a messaging infrastructure. Anyway you'll register a domain, so why not to optimize your business, reducing costs related to mailserver maintenance? I think, google would do much better my mail management than me. Also it would do much better spam filetring (this is reply for @dynambee 's mension of spam problem)

@dynambee said in How to get copy sent to me of all customer order-related emails?:

Is there an option for IMAP that I am missing?

Just click the email icon on th very top of TB's admin, and select the link "show all messages"

[dynambee]

@mdekker said in How to get copy sent to me of all customer order-related emails?:

Doesn't your outbound mail get collected by your provider?

If using IMAP (which we do now for all our automated emails) then yes, any mail we send is saved in our sent items folder.

This is not something that SMTP does, at least not as a standard feature in postfix.

[DaoKakao]

@dynambee If you use the postfix, you already have all needed for bcc'ing any mail and you don't need any extra efforts with php, IMHO :) And thi is one of standard features in postfix

[dynambee]

@daokakao said in How to get copy sent to me of all customer order-related emails?:

When you starting real business (eg trading) you'll need a messaging infrastructure. Anyway you'll register a domain, so why not to optimize your business, reducing costs related to mailserver maintenance? I think, google would do much better my mail management than me.

Google charges $5 per month per email address. If we moved all our domains over to Google Apps for Business we would have to pay something around $300 per month just for email. We could reduce that cost by using domain aliases but that creates problems for outbound mail. If you have only one domain and only a few email accounts (or if you have a huge budget) then Google or a similar email service can be a low-cost option. There are drawbacks however and that includes the outbound mail spam issue.

Also it would do much better spam filetring (this is reply for @dynambee 's mension of spam problem)

The problem isn't incoming spam, the problem is outgoing messages to customers being tagged as spam. This is a really big issue and is one that has become an increasing problem with messages we send from Google's outbound servers. This affects everyone on Google's severs, not only us.

Just click the email icon on th very top of TB's admin, and select the link "show all messages"

That is not IMAP. I need a copy of the messages in an email client. I do not wish to visit a whole bunch of different store domains and click through the admin panel to see what messages may or may not be there. They need to be in a mail client with a combined inbox so everything is easy to see and reply to from one place.