Email Delivery Issues

Summary

Occasionally we receive reports that students are not receiving emails sent from your system. While there are times that an email will fail to be sent, often times the email is delivered, but it is not recognized by the recipient because it has been filtered to a "promotions'" or "spam" folder.

Troubleshooting 

1. Check the "spam" folder. Note that most spam folders get regularly purged, so generally a user would only find a recent email in the spam folder. If an email was sent more than 7 days prior, it likely has been purged. If an email is found in a spam folder, it can be marked as "not spam", and all future emails from that sender should not be sent to the spam folder. See these help articles from Gmail and Yahoo.
2. Check your "promotions" folder (eg Gmail). Some web services (eg gmail) categorize incoming mail into folders other than the inbox, causing your to emails be hidden in these folders.
3. An email from your system was identified by the student as "spam." This can happen either on purpose or by accident, but all major webmail services (gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc.) have a feature that lets users mark an email as spam. When this happens, gmail and yahoo servers report back to our servers that the email is spam.  The email then goes on a blacklist and no longer sends emails to that student. This reporting system is an internet standard and not something we can change. If you believe this has happened to you, please contact the Align support team, and we can remove your name from the blacklist.
4. Webmail account has run out of space. Sometimes, webmail accounts can "fill up" due to the number or size of emails which can prevent a user from receiving emails. Make sure you have enough space on your account.

Solutions

1. Create a Contact - Have users create a contact using your School's email address. This will help emails stay out of the spam folder. Most webmail services won't send emails through to a spam folder if that email is setup as a contact on their account.
2. Check Email Address - Have the Recipient double check that their email is in the system correctly.
3. Contact Align - If you've tried all the above solutions, please contact us at help@alignmyschool.com