Hello,
We have a very strange problem that we are dealing with for some time now and could not find the root cause: we have an application (some accounting ERP) that sends out emails to customers with invoices. This application has lists of email addresses for each client and when an invoice is sent, it is sent to that list of emails per client. When the email is received, everyone can see who received the email (basically they are all in the CC field).
At some point, however, customers started complaining that they cannot see to whom we sent the invoice (the understanding is that we sent at the agreed upon list). The invoices were sent to the email list and they confirm they receive them, but cannot see the addresses at which the invoices were sent to - basically the list of emails now seems to be in BCC, instead of CC.
The application has not changed for a long time now and while we did try to find with the app`s maker a reason why this happens, we were not able to. Still, we did find the following from our tests:
- if the email list is written in the application using a semicolon (;), e.g.: email1@client1.com; email2@client1.com; email3@client1.com then the behavior we observe is the wrong one (emails are being received but the addresses are not visible, like they are in BCC)
- if the email list is written in the application using a comma (,), e.g.: email1@client1.com, email2@client1.com, email3@client1.com then the behavior we observe is the correct one (emails are receive and the addresses are visible, like they are in CC). Interestingly, the email clients on the receiver`s end (whether Outlook, Outlook.com, etc) show the emails as separated by a semicolon (;), like: email1@client1.com; email2@client1.com; email3@client1.com
By manually writing the emails and separating them with a comma (,) we can send the emails as we need and are received and shown properly. The problem is that this requires manual intervention, which is not possible except when testing. The emails are entered in fields in the application and then when the automatic actions send the emails, they are basically sent to the whole list using semicolon (;) as separator.
This is a widely-used application at the national level and the issue only occurs in our environment. It does not occur when sending through other email services, for example. This leads us to believe that the problem is with SmarterMail since we are the only ones where the application sends the emails through SmarterMail.
The problem started sometime in June, so we believe that is started after updating SM to Build 8566; however, we are not 100% sure since it took some time for clients to complain about this.
Does anyone else see this behavior or has had issues similar with this?
Were there any encoding changes made in this build or the ones close to it that might be able to cause such an issue?
If anyone has seen such a strange behavior as well, please let me know.