---
sourceDocument: Australia ServiceNow AI Platform Administration
sourceDocumentLink: https://servicenow-prod.fluidtopics.net/r/platform-administration

 Release :

    - australia

ft:locale :

    - en-US

ft:publication_title :

    - Australia ServiceNow AI Platform Administration

ft:clusterId :

    - platadm

bundleId :

    - platadm

workflow :

    - Platform


---

# Email FAQs and troubleshooting

# Email FAQs and troubleshooting notification emails {#ariaid-title1}

Release version: Australia  
Updated March 12, 2026  
![](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/portal-asset/ico-clock) 3 minutes to read
Summarize  
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## Summary of Email FAQs and Troubleshooting Notification Emails

This document provides guidance for ServiceNow customers on troubleshooting email notifications.
It includes information on logs and diagnostics that facilitate the identification of email delivery issues, ensuring effective communication within the system.
Show full answer Show less  

## Key Features

* **Logs and Diagnostics:** Tools for monitoring email health and identifying problems with individual emails.
* **Email Log Checking:** Instructions for checking the Sent and Failed System Mailboxes, as well as the message log and Error string field for specific email issues.
* **Exponential Back-off Retries:** A mechanism for redelivering undelivered emails with increasing intervals until a specified lookback period elapses.
* **Email Diagnostics Page:** Offers a current status of email configurations, including properties and scheduled jobs affecting email flow.

## Key Outcomes

By utilizing these troubleshooting resources, customers can effectively diagnose and resolve email-related issues, ensuring that notifications are sent and received as intended. This results in improved communication efficiency and reliability within the ServiceNow platform.  
Logs and diagnostics are provided to help determine whether notification emails are being sent and received successfully, what any issues are, and who receives the email.

Diagnostics help monitor the overall health of the system and troubleshoot general problems,
such as not receiving any incoming mail. Logs help identify problems with individual emails, and
different logs are useful for diagnosing different types of problems.

## Log checking scenarios {#troubleshooting-notification-emails__section_vsv_w24_2gb}

{#troubleshooting-notification-emails__table_wfc_dfh_2gb__entry__2}

| Problem | Log |
|-|-|
| Need to check whether an individual notification email was successfully sent | Check the Sent System Mailbox for that email. Also check the Failed System Mailbox for failure notifications. |
| Individual email failed | * Check the message log of the individual email. * Check the Error string field of the email record. Warning: Some email servers do not return error strings {#troubleshooting-notification-emails__ul_kcl_l2c_mgb} |
| Email not received by end user | * Check the Junk System Mailbox for notifications about returned emails. These emails also appear in the Emails log with a Type of received-ignored. * Check the Error string field of the email record. Warning: Some email servers do not return error strings * Check the message log of the individual email for the reasons different recipients were included or excluded. {#troubleshooting-notification-emails__ul_ofs_j5c_mgb} |
[ ]

{#troubleshooting-notification-emails__table_wfc_dfh_2gb}

## Email FAQs {#troubleshooting-notification-emails__section_a4f_dnc_l1c}

<br />

## Troubleshooting resources {#troubleshooting-notification-emails__section_ynq_vv3_j1b}

See the following resources on troubleshooting inbound and outbound email problems.  
{#troubleshooting-notification-emails__table_rhh_2tr_n4__entry__2}

| Error or symptom | Solution |
|-|-|
| Inbound Email FAQ | See [KB0957760](https://support.servicenow.com/nav_to.do?uri=/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0957760). |
| Instance not receiving inbound email | See Inbound email troubleshooting, ServiceNow [KB0524472](https://support.servicenow.com/kb_view.do?sysparm_article=KB0524472) and [KB0520595](https://support.servicenow.com/nav_to.do?uri=/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0520595). These KB articles also provide links to a video series on troubleshooting inbound emails. |
| Instance not sending outbound email | See Troubleshooting Outbound email, ServiceNow [KB0521382](https://support.servicenow.com/kb_view.do?sysparm_article=KB0521382). This KB article also provides links to a video series on troubleshooting outbound emails. |
| Email from Outlook produces an empty Incident record containing an attachment named winmail.dat. | Configure the local Outlook client or Exchange server not to send Rich Text formatted (RTF) data to the instance. |
| Emails are getting set to type send-ignored for no obvious reason | See [KB0790932](https://support.servicenow.com/nav_to.do?uri=/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0790932). |
| Duplicate emails generated by the instance | See Troubleshooting duplicate emails generated by the instance, [KB0529413](https://support.servicenow.com/nav_to.do?uri=/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0529413). |
| SMTP Sender Job Stuck | See SMTP Sender Job Stuck \> 30 Mins alert, [KB0755061](https://support.servicenow.com/nav_to.do?uri=/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0755061). |
| Connection to smtp.office365.com failed | See [KB0825391](https://support.servicenow.com/nav_to.do?uri=/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0825391). |
| IMAP with OAuth error AUTHENTICATE failed | See [KB0963959](https://support.servicenow.com/nav_to.do?uri=/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0963959). |
| Error connecting the POP email account on secure port | See [KB0829289](https://support.servicenow.com/nav_to.do?uri=/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0829289). |
| Inbound email processing is stuck alerts | See [KB0855277](https://support.servicenow.com/nav_to.do?uri=/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0855277). |
| Email Reader / SMTP Sender job stuck | See [KB0679998](https://support.servicenow.com/nav_to.do?uri=/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0679998). |
| Email Reader Job stuck/running for more than 2 hours alerts | See [KB0755063](https://support.servicenow.com/nav_to.do?uri=/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0755063). |
| SMTP retries | The SMTPSender job is responsible for sending emails from the instance and at times there can be delivery failures during transmission. Emails that aren't successfully delivered might need retries. Exponential back-off retries is a mechanism to redeliver them in the interval (1, 5, 10, 20, 40, 60, 120, 120) between the retries. The exponential retries continue until the lookback period mentioned in the glide.email.smtp.claim.lookback.hrs system property is lapsed. The retries are attempted for 4xx status codes and for all other status codes such as 5xx are considered as permanent failure. The glide.smtp.fail_message_ids and glide.smtp.defer_retry_ids system properties aren't considered. Retried emails type is set to send-retry-backoff. |
[ ]

{#troubleshooting-notification-emails__table_rhh_2tr_n4}

## Exponential back-off retries {#troubleshooting-notification-emails__section_bqj_crn_xbc}

Emails that aren't successfully delivered might need retries. Exponential back-off retries is a mechanism to redeliver them in the interval (1, 5, 10, 20, 40, 60, 120, 120) between the retries. The exponential retries continue
until the lookback period mentioned in the glide.email.smtp.claim.lookback.hrs system property is lapsed.

The retries are attempted for 4xx status codes and fail for 5xx status codes during the email delivery. The glide.smtp.fail_message_ids and glide.smtp.defer_retry_ids system properties
aren't considered.  
Retried emails type is set to send-retry-backoff.  
Note:  
Address validation errors that occur during the email delivery are handled differently. The type of email record is set to send-retry-delayed and the email delivery is retried in fixed intervals of 30 minutes until the lookback period is lapsed.
* **[Email diagnostics](https://servicenow-prod.fluidtopics.net/sp6pw~dNTfmO33y7YagiYA)**   
  The Diagnostics and Connection page provides information on the current state of your email configuration. This page includes status on email properties, scheduled jobs, and email account connections that affect how your instance receives and sends email.
* **[System email log and mailboxes](https://servicenow-prod.fluidtopics.net/UJAlIFzBcOUh6ciEtMgFzA)**   
  The system email log records all emails that the instance creates or receives. System mailboxes are filtered views of this log.
* **[Message logs for individual emails](https://servicenow-prod.fluidtopics.net/Stx4Hj_lWK6OGvN4tlYeKA)**   
  The email log entries for an individual notification email are accessible as a related list in the email record. The Error string field in the email record can provide additional information.

**Related concepts**   

* [Email notifications dashboard](https://servicenow-prod.fluidtopics.net/7w9gLUk1hgdIguY6LdmvSA "The email notification dashboard provides visibility into key metrics and enables admins to configure the dashboard to enable access to other users.")
* [Email diagnostics dashboard](https://servicenow-prod.fluidtopics.net/TG91rsHsoDsrTycgWCr5tQ "The email diagnostics dashboards provide visibility in to email delivery metrics that can help in improving the email health by identifying errors and areas that need deeper investigation.")
* [Email templates](https://servicenow-prod.fluidtopics.net/1UcF1oidqHjvH5Ns8OL1jg "Email templates enable administrators to create reusable content for the subject line and message body of email notifications.")
* [Email layouts](https://servicenow-prod.fluidtopics.net/Kxp0niVjdVEeJbibbk6~rQ "Create reusable content for the message body of email templates.")
* [Email retention](https://servicenow-prod.fluidtopics.net/6oN7F2J9quVPe27oM8fnEw "You can archive and eventually destroy email messages that you no longer need or if your Email table is excessively large.")
* [Watermarks on notification emails](https://servicenow-prod.fluidtopics.net/ddxOaboR2DYrjHfmbzG6IQ "By default, a unique watermark label will be generated at the bottom of each notification email to allow matching incoming email to existing records.")
* [Email digests](https://servicenow-prod.fluidtopics.net/CMni76waFoQqBH9zjw3lUQ "An email digest is a single email that summarizes the activity for a selected notification and its target records during a specified time interval. You can enable an email digest to reduce the number of notifications received when frequent updates to the associated records occur within a short time period.")
* [Domain separation and Notifications](https://servicenow-prod.fluidtopics.net/z2mlKcCb9O4aXDNiNbqQlA "Domain separation is supported in the Notifications application. Domain separation enables you to separate data, processes, and administrative tasks into logical groupings called domains. You can control several aspects of this separation, including which users can see and access data.")  
**Related tasks**   

* [Create notification categories](https://servicenow-prod.fluidtopics.net/DASk94Dmhx2~I72XCdR17w "You can create notification categories to identify and group related notifications that are listed in the notification settings for your users.")
* [Create an email notification](https://servicenow-prod.fluidtopics.net/vaPuVLOcN_zPS8jyrTPDmw "Create an email notification specifying when to send it, who receives it, what it contains, and if it can be delivered in an email digest.")
* [Parse an email thread](https://servicenow-prod.fluidtopics.net/dW4sdZAsP3OLWhP~rkVw7w "When an email is received, parse the most recent message in an email thread by creating Email Reply Separators using specified string or regular expressions.")