How do you deal with the uncertainty of email?

Question

I'm working on several processes which could potentially run into problems that must be solved by people. Currently it logs these errors and sends an email to relevant individuals.

But email seems to be the weak link here. Problems I run into: email server is down, the email gets caught in a spam filter, email "never arrived."

Do I need to build in some kind of intra-mail and require users to check yet another inbox, or are there any things I can do to feel more comfortable with my email notifications? Can I require open-receipts or anything like that, and if it's not opened then email again? Other ideas?

Answer 1

You should code for "server is down". If the emails can't be sent, you need to queue them to be sent as soon as possible.

You should explicitly tell users it's up to them to put your messages on the "not spam" list. You shouldn't be worrying about the spam filter.

Email "never arrived" isn't very common at all in practice, as long as you've written code for when the server is down.

Finally, you can put a click-to-acknowledge link into emails, and resend an email hourly until a notification is sent back.