What happens to mail during an outage

With mail flow, Footer365 sits in the path of your outbound mail, so it is fair to ask what happens when part of it is not working. The short answer is that mail is held and retried by Exchange Online, not lost, and that the parts of Footer365 other than the relay can fail without affecting mail at all.

If the relay cannot be reached

The Footer365 transport rule routes mail to the relay through the Footer365 outbound connector. If Exchange Online cannot connect to the relay, it does what it does for any unreachable smart host: it keeps the message in its queue and tries again later. Once the relay answers, the queued messages are delivered, with their signatures.

While this lasts, people will notice mail to the affected recipients arriving late. They will not normally receive a bounce straight away. Exchange Online applies its own limit to how long it keeps retrying a message; that limit is Microsoft's, not Footer365's.

If the relay asks Exchange to retry

The relay can also answer a message with a temporary 4xx response, for example if it cannot reach the Footer365 service to look up your account. Exchange treats this the same way: it keeps the message and retries. The possible responses and their meanings are listed in Delivery status codes.

The relay is built to fail this way rather than the other: when it cannot be certain what to do with a message from your organisation, it asks Exchange to keep it, rather than accepting a message it cannot deliver.

The relay never bounces your mail because of your account

A message your organisation genuinely sent is never permanently rejected because of the state of your Footer365 account:

• Signatures paused for billing: mail is delivered without a signature.
• Account switched off: mail is delivered without a signature.
• Setup not finished: mail is delivered without a signature once there is somewhere to return it to, and held for retry until then.
• A loop in your mail flow rules: mail is delivered, and a warning is written to your audit log.

The only permanent rejections are for mail Footer365 cannot tie to your organisation; see Delivery status codes.

If the portal or add-in is unavailable

• The Footer365 portal being unavailable does not affect mail. You cannot change templates or rules until it is back.
• The Outlook add-in never blocks a message. If it cannot reach Footer365, the message sends as normal and the relay adds the signature on the way out. With the Outlook add-in only, the message goes without a signature.
• Directory sync catches up on its next run. Until then, changes made in Microsoft 365, such as a new job title, are not yet reflected in signatures.

Planned maintenance

Planned maintenance is carried out at quiet times where possible. While any is scheduled or under way, a banner at the top of every page of your Footer365 portal says what it is, when it runs in UK time, and whether it is expected to stop signatures being added. It goes away by itself once the work is finished or cancelled. The same windows are shown on the status page.

If the work is expected to stop signatures for more than 30 minutes, Footer365 gives at least 48 hours' notice. As well as the banner, your organisation's account owner is emailed about it, or the technical contact if there is no account owner on record. If the times change, they are emailed again with the new times.

While such work runs, mail behaves as it does during an outage: Exchange Online may hold some outbound email and send it when the work is finished, so it can arrive late, and some may be sent without a signature. No email is lost, and you do not need to change anything.

While Footer365 is being updated

When a new version of Footer365 is installed, each part of it is replaced in turn, one at a time. While a part is being replaced, or is waiting for a change it needs to the Footer365 database, opening it shows a page headed "We are updating this part of Footer365" that names it, such as the customer portal, instead of the page you asked for. Only the parts the new version changes wait for the database; the rest go on working. The Outlook add-in's task pane shows a shorter page headed "Back in a moment".

The page checks again every 20 seconds and takes you back to where you were, so there is nothing you need to do. An update never stops the relay, so signatures are still added to your email while the page shows.

While an update holds any part of Footer365, the status page shows it as maintenance in progress, titled "Updating Footer365", with the parts it affects. The entry is written and closed by the update itself, and says once the update has finished that it is complete, or that the update was undone if it had to be. Subscribers are emailed about it only if it runs for 15 minutes or more, and then again when it ends.

What you can see

• The status page at the Footer365 status page shows the current state of each Footer365 service and any incident being worked on.
• In Exchange, the Queued messages report in the Exchange admin centre lists messages waiting to be delivered, and a message trace shows the relay's response for any deferred message. See Delivery status codes for how to find it.

Being told without looking

You do not have to keep the status page open to hear about an incident. It offers two ways to be told.

By email

Use the Subscribe button at the top of the status page, or the subscribe link at its foot, and enter an email address. Choose Everything to hear about every service and all planned maintenance, including services added later, or tick only the parts your organisation uses. For example, an organisation on the Outlook add-in only might tick the Add-in Service, and one on mail flow the SMTP Relay. Tick planned maintenance as well to hear about work scheduled ahead; ticked with no service, it tells you about all planned maintenance and no incidents.

Nothing is sent until the address is confirmed. A confirmation email arrives within a minute or two, and its link works for 48 hours. Open it and use the button on the page it opens. The subscribe page gives the same answer whatever address is entered, so if the address already receives updates it is told so by email instead.

Once confirmed, the address is emailed when Footer365 posts an incident update or schedules, changes or cancels planned maintenance that affects what it chose, and the Footer365 team chooses to email it. It is also emailed when an update of Footer365 that affects what it chose has been under way for 15 minutes, and again when that update ends. An incident that names no service is platform-wide and goes to everyone who chose any service. A subscription made while an incident is open hears only of the updates after that; the status page shows the rest. A large list is reached over a few minutes, at 20 emails a minute.

Every update email has two links at its foot: one to change what the address receives, which takes effect at once, and one to unsubscribe, which asks first and then deletes the subscription. Many mail programs also show their own Unsubscribe button for these emails. Subscriptions are separate from your Footer365 account: anyone can subscribe without signing in, and several people in your organisation can each subscribe their own address.

This is separate from the planned maintenance email to your organisation's account owner described above, which is sent by its own rule whether or not anyone has subscribed.

By feed

If you use a feed reader, or a tool such as Microsoft Teams or Slack that can follow one, add one of these addresses:

• RSS: https://status.footer365.net/feed.rss
• Atom: https://status.footer365.net/feed.atom

Each incident update and each change to planned maintenance is its own entry, with the services it affects. The feed carries active incidents, incidents resolved in the last 7 days, planned maintenance that is scheduled or under way, and maintenance completed or cancelled in the last 7 days. To follow only some services, add them to the address, for example https://status.footer365.net/feed.atom?services=SmtpRelay,AddIn; the subscribe page builds this address for you as you tick services. An entry that names no service is always included.

The feeds and the emails carry what the Footer365 team declares. A service the status page shows as degraded from its own health checks, with no incident declared, appears in neither.

What to do during an outage

1. Check the status page.
2. Look at the queued messages report to see how much mail is waiting and for which senders.
3. Leave the Footer365 connectors and rules as they are. Messages already queued are delivered once the relay answers again. Changes made by hand during an outage can leave mail flow in a state that has to be repaired afterwards.
4. If the delay is affecting your business and you are considering changing mail flow to send without signatures, contact support first, so the change is made in a way that can be cleanly reversed.

Related

• Mail delayed or bounced
• Signatures paused
• How mail flows through Footer365