The first quarter of 2017 was very busy at SpamExperts. We’ve been rolling out new features and updates designed to further improve our email filtering and archiving systems.

In this blog post, we’ve highlighted the most important updates of Q1 2017. For a comprehensive list of updates, please visit the changelog in our knowledgebase.

Front-end/Web Interface

Manage queued messages from log search

In an effort to give users more control over their messages, we are continuing to expand the possibilities available from the log search pages. We have added the ability to work with single and bulk messages that are in the delivery queue. Users can view the messages, force a delivery retry, and remove them. Functionality has also been added to select whether or not to notify the sender and whether the message should be reported to our training systems.

To view queued messages before running a search, users can simply select the “Queued” status filter.

Access archived messages from log search

Our Email Archiving product now allows users to access their archived messages directly from the log search page. Upon doing a log search, messages that are archived will showcase their subjects as links so users can more easily view the message.

It is important to note that logging data retention may be shorter than archive data retention. Therefore, users can only use this method to locate messages if the logging data is still available.

Destination response in the log search

In the log search results, it is now possible for users to see the destination server’s exact response from the latest delivery attempt for a message; similarly, this function can be used as a filter option. For results to include this information, use the “Customize” drop down list and select “Delivery Data.” Because the response from the destination server often includes additional information, that information may be helpful in troubleshooting issues on the destination server environment that are triggering the message to be queued. The information can also be used in our preview of the Email Scout Reports, which is available from the log search results.

Other updates

• We have made it possible to reset the primary contact email to an empty field in the Domain Settings page.
• The journaling option has been moved to the Archive Recipients page.
• Two new delivery statuses are now available in the interface: “Accepted and Discarded” and “Automatically Released via Whitelist”.

Software

Messages sent to multiple recipients with different Whitelist/Blacklist Senders/Recipients set-ups

This story is a bit technical, but how we handle connections has been significantly changed. Up until now, if user attempted to send a single message using one SMTP connection/transaction to multiple recipients with separate filtering settings, then the system would force the sender to deliver the email using separate connections to ensure we can process the messages individually. We have adjusted this behavior so that the message is now processed for all recipients at the same time.

As a result, if a legitimate message is sent to several recipients and one of the recipients has the sender in a blacklist, the message will be delivered to everyone except the one recipient who has the blacklist entry. For that recipient, the message will be quarantined.

In the same way, if a spam message is sent to multiple recipients and one of them has the sender or recipient in a whitelist, then the message will be quarantined for all recipients except for the one with the address in the sender/recipient whitelist.

Other updates

• We have excluded “Received” headers from the encoding check to support non-ASCII domains in such headers.
• We have added a “Diagnostic Code” for messages bounced because of unrouteable addresses.
• We have added functionality that prevents adding an Authenticating IP Outgoing User that contains or is contained in the IP range of another IP Outgoing User.

Plugins & integration

• Our latest WHMCS add-on is compatible with WHMCS 7.

Until our next quarterly technical update, stay safe and simply spam free. Feel free to drop us a comment in the section below.