We have encountered issues related to email enabled document libraries stop receiving emails.

After investigations listed below is the synopsis of the issue.

Background

  • Intermitently we have encountered (on different environments) issues with email enabled libraries stop receiving emails
  • Emails enabled document library successfully received emails for months
  • Suddenly document library stops getting emails
  • Within the configuration of the doc lib, we see that the doc lib is still email enabled, but it would not received emails
  • Within the ULS log there is a message “The following aliases were unknown: XXXX” as SharePoint cannot verify\locate the email alias

 

Result

  • Emailed enabled document library stop receiving emails
  • As SharePoint does not send back notifications for emails it could not process, sender is unaware that the emails did not reach its destination in SharePoint
  • Within document settings, the document library still shows as email enabled

 

Cause

  • A triggering event (at present this is unknown as we cannot recreate it in dev\test) causes email alias to be marked as deleted within MOSS_CONFIG.EmailEnabledList table

 

Fix

  • Disable and enable again the email setting within the document library
  • Run “stsadm –o refreshdms –url <web application url>”. Note: This command will re-sync and enable all email enabled document library present within a specific web application.

 

Workaround

  • Until we are able to identify the triggering event, we are
    • Proactively monitoring the MOSS_CONFIG.EmailEnabledList table to check for any email enabled list with Deleted column = true. This is an indicator that email enabled document library may not be receiving emails.
    • If we encounter such a scenario, then we run “stsadm –o refreshdms –url <web application url>” noted in the Fix section above or reset the email enabled setting

 

Currently looking into the triggering event, hence if we find one, I will post it.