XADM: Delivery Receipt Has Unknown for To, Subject, and Sent (147545)

SYMPTOMS

When you send a message from a Microsoft Exchange Server site over the X.400 Connector, the delivery receipts are incomplete. It contains the following:

Your message
To: Unknown
Subject: Unknown
Sent: Unknown

was delivered to the following recipient(s):

/o=MICROSOFT/ou=EXCHNGSITE/cn=Recipients/cn=Admin on 1/18/96 3:59:54 PM

CAUSE

This problem occurs if any of the following conditions are met:

The X.400 Connector is set to operate in 1984 conformance mode.
The client has a personal folder store as the default delivery location.
You have clicked to clear the Save a copy of the item in the 'Sent Items' folder check box and sent a message.

The X.400 specification generates reports (delivery and read) based on the information in the message envelope. The envelope does not contain the To, Subject, and Sent information in the delivery report. Therefore, this information is not returned by the X.400 system receiving the message.

RESOLUTION

To overcome this limitation of the X.400 specification, Exchange Server uses the Content Correlator attribute. When a message is sent over the Exchange Server X.400 connector, an attribute called the Content Correlator is filled in the envelope of a message. When the X.400 system at the other end of the X.400 Connector generates a report (delivery or read), based on the 1988 X.400 specification, the Content Correlator attribute is returned to the originating system.

MORE INFORMATION

The information store uses the Content Correlator to scan for a copy of the message in the Sent Items folder. If a copy is found, the information store extracts the To, Subject, and Sent information and adds it to the delivery report. If a copy is not found, "Unknown" is entered for the To, Subject, and Sent fields.

The information store only searches the Sent Items folder in the server-based information store. Personal folder stores are not searched. Therefore, if the user has the personal folder store set as the default delivery location, "Unknown" is entered for the To, Subject, and Sent field in the delivery receipts from the X.400 Connector.

The 1988 X.400 specification guarantees that the Content Correlator attribute in the envelope is returned to the sender. However, the 1984 X.400 specification does not guarantee this. Therefore, some 1984 compliant X.400 MTAs may not return the Content Correlator attribute in delivery reports. As a result, the information store on the sending side enters "Unknown" for the To, Subject, and Sent fields.