Emails coming in late (delayed emails)

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Status
Not open for further replies.
B

bjaytiamsic26

Honorable
Jan 14, 2014
8
0
10,510
Hello!

We experienced a problem on the Chief-Operating-Officer's desktop outlook. More than Emails came in late. Our IT Manager said:

[quote"]As per checking on the server and on the OWA of COO – a synchronization error occur in the Outlook of COO desktop. Synchronization did not complete and system tried to complete it up to late 5:40pm but was not successful.

Have attach the error checking as well as grep tracing of 'COO's email address' email address . On the grep tracing it shows that email started to update by about 3:00PM in COO outlook folder

Root cause – mail server and storage database of 'company' email was already in near capacity and limit threshold. And 'company' mail storage hard disk has occasionally went offline and dismounted in the exchange mail server. Which cause the synchronization of folder to slow down and failed and since COO Outlook has many identity it will need update each of the folder identity.

Synchronization usually occur for all outlook email folder when server was restarted or went offline and upon staff logging to email. This is normally automatically done by Outlook behind"
[/quote]

I just want to ask if these are the possible causes.
Thanks and Best Regards
Bob
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
Two questions.
1. If you don't trust your IT Manager, why are you retaining his services?
2. So you don't trust your IT manager, who is presumably a trained professional, with direct access to the system for analysis, and our instead going to trust some random strangers off the internet, most, if not all of whom, have no professional training on this whatsoever, and in any case have no access to the system for analysis. Why is he not looking for another job?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Sad to say, actually some staff here are not knowledgeable on IT matters. I am a new employee here and was shocked that this IT Manager was promoted, by rumors, because of accidentally fixing about 10 years ago.

Anyways, are those errors possible to happen in Outlook?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Well, I am having some trouble following what the IT manager is saying but I'll do my best. Please note it is possible that the IT Manager is trying to explain something in "laymans terms" and thus, did not give you the complete, accurate response. With that said, the response doesn't make sense.
Outlook synchronization is used to synchronize an offline\local copy of your mail file with the "live" copy of said mail file on the exchange server. Synchronization errors do happen, and are actually pretty common (though you normally don't see them as they usually don't hurt anything). However that has nothing at all to do with when an email is delivered. Assuming a major sync error occurs that completely prevents the ost (local mail file) from being updated, the email is still delivered to the mail box. The user, in this case the COO, would not see them in outlook, but they would be there in his mail file. And, when he goes to OWA, that pulls directly from the exchange server and he would see them there. If he isn't seeing them there either, then the mail has not already been delivered and synchronization has nothing to do with it.
My guess based on what was written is that a major problem occured (i.e., an outage, affecting at least the exchange server the COOs mailbox is on) and this prevented the mail from being delivered; it may have also caused the separate issue of a sycn error. So I wouldn't say he is lying per say, just either a. downplaying what is essentially a mail outage (big issue) and calling it a sync error (small issue), or b. trying to explain something in a way that he thinks you will understand.
As I said at the begining though, this is all guessing based on what you wrote which may or may not be accurate since I am getting it third hand.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I see. So synchronization has nothing to do with this problem.
We already experienced this scenario, he tries to explain reasons on errors and when I analyze it, his conclusions does not match what I have pulled up. That's why old staffs here have doubts on every conclusions given by the IT Manager. Thank you so much! I really appreciate this one.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
These are the corrective actions that he recommended.

Any comment about this will be appreaciated. :)

"Corrective Action

1. Short term and immediate corrective action

A. Continue manual deletion of email database storage in transaction log of all email storage 'company'.
B. Increase disk space of the mail server drive C by removing log and transfer it to other storage disk(not delete as this is system log and may be needed if error occur) as free space as already 12 GB and was near already to the threshold limit of 10 GB free space
C. Ask staff to continue and delete further the messages in the inbox / Sent / Deleted items folder. – IT staff to check each desktop within this week.
D. Ask staff to regularly reboot and restart the desktop - suggest one in the morning and one in the afternoon – to refresh the desktop and for Synchronization to refresh as well as to refresh connection to email server.
E. Ask staff to regularly click update folder so that synchronization will be manually done.
F. For COO desktop – May I suggest to restart it also twice a day to refresh as well as click update folder for each identity so that synchronization will be done manually

2. Long term corrective action

a. Increase hard disk capacity of mail server itself and increase memory size
b. Increase capacity of the mail storage database for 'company' c. Replace 'company' hard disk mail storage as this contribute and cause slowdown in the synchronization
d. Run the automatic system deletion of the backup and delete of transaction log."









 
Upvote 1 Downvote
These are the corrective actions that he recommended.

Any comment about this will be appreaciated. :)

"Corrective Action

1. Short term and immediate corrective action

A. Continue manual deletion of email database storage in transaction log of all email storage 'company'.
B. Increase disk space of the mail server drive C by removing log and transfer it to other storage disk(not delete as this is system log and may be needed if error occur) as free space as already 12 GB and was near already to the threshold limit of 10 GB free space
C. Ask staff to continue and delete further the messages in the inbox / Sent / Deleted items folder. – IT staff to check each desktop within this week.
D. Ask staff to regularly reboot and restart the desktop - suggest one in the morning and one in the afternoon – to refresh the desktop and for Synchronization to refresh as well as to refresh connection to email server.
E. Ask staff to regularly click update folder so that synchronization will be manually done.
F. For COO desktop – May I suggest to restart it also twice a day to refresh as well as click update folder for each identity so that synchronization will be done manually

2. Long term corrective action

a. Increase hard disk capacity of mail server itself and increase memory size
b. Increase capacity of the mail storage database for 'company' c. Replace 'company' hard disk mail storage as this contribute and cause slowdown in the synchronization
d. Run the automatic system deletion of the backup and delete of transaction log."









 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Well, I can't really say if those steps are appropriate because I don't have access to the system, the logs, etc. So I don't know what is the root cause of the issue. Unfortunately, he is the only person who probably has enough information to make that determination. With that said, while I have no idea what equipment you guys are using, assuming it is even remotely modern, telling the end users to reboot periodically throughout the day is not a reasonable solution. Neither is forcing users to perform manual synchs regularly. I will say that if one of my vendors\service providers told me that the solution was for everyone to periodically restart their computer, the contract would be terminated immediately.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Status
Not open for further replies.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom