CUNY Academic Commons

Ok, the title was meant to say "Email sender," sorry, sending this on the go.

Ray, have you seen anything similar? It may not be something we can control, since it's presumably happening after WP has passed the email along to the system emailer.

Yes, I noticed it for one cron email sent by WordPress. I think you're right that this is set at the system mailer level.

We should send an email to IT to see whether they can relax the default From header to use whatever wp_mail() sets before defaulting to "CUNYGC Linux Service" if nothing exists.

I've just sent an email to IT about this. Boone, you were CC'd on the email as well.

Beat me to it! Thanks, Ray!

Lihua responded thus:

Do you have fixed "From" address that your site uses?
Our exchange admin said he can add additional "from" addresses to the linux.svc account, but you would let us know what the customized From address(es) would be.

Ray, can you begin to think about the places where we modify this? In many places I think we send as "CUNY Academic Commons <commons@gc.cuny.edu>" which would be easy to add to the list. But I think that WP comment notifications have a custom Reply-To, and I think you might have some customization in the way that group notifications are sent?

Also, I wonder if this can be mitigated by distinguishing custom Reply-To and custom From?

Ray, can you begin to think about the places where we modify this?

Most notably for group forum emails. See #12505. This also would include how RBE functions with the 'Reply-To' email header. Right now, RBE functionality is broken due to their overrides.

However, we have other email plugins that could customize the 'From' header as well.

Also, I wonder if this can be mitigated by distinguishing custom Reply-To and custom From?

This could be possible if we tell IT to ignore emails that include the 'X-BuddyPress-Type' email header, but this would only cover group forum emails and not the other email plugins.

The thing that we most want to avoid, I think, is the "CUNYGC Linux Service". If our only option was to set a very late filter to force all emails to "CUNY Academic Commons", I think it'd be better than nothing.

It seems like it's going to be difficult to salvage the approach in #12505. I wonder, though, whether we could convince them to accept a different 'From:' name but the same address. So:

From: My Commons Group <linux.svc@gc.cuny.edu>

This would require some scripting on their end to parse the From header, so it's probably a long shot.

This might also be an opportunity to think about moving to an external email sending service that wouldn't impose this restriction. Ray, what would be the implications of such a move?

I wonder, though, whether we could convince them to accept a different 'From:' name but the same address.

I was thinking the same thing. Let's request this as well as asking IT to hopefully exclude changes to the 'Reply-To' header only for emails containing the 'X-BuddyPress-Type' email header.

This would require some scripting on their end to parse the From header, so it's probably a long shot.

I'm hoping there are rules they can apply before they set the From header.

Ray, what would be the implications of such a move?

Cost and reliability. I'm not sure how many emails we send per month from the main site.

Cost and reliability. I'm not sure how many emails we send per month from the main site.

Right. Let's hold off on more research until we see whether the GC can help us.

Could you please summarize the requests and send them back to the IT Services ticket? If they say no to our requests, we might have to go back to the drawing board.

This has been happening since early July - https://redmine.gc.cuny.edu/issues/16352

FWIW, the "new cuny.is" emails and Redmine updates come from there as well:
-----Original Message-----
From: GC Linux Service <linux.svc@gc.cuny.edu>
Sent: Monday, August 8, 2022 2:18 PM
To: Academic Commons, CUNY <commons@gc.cuny.edu>
Subject: New cuny.is URL: jfunke2

_From: GC Linux Service <linux.svc@gc.cuny.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, August 9, 2022 11:12 AM
To: Weber, Marilyn <mweber@gc.cuny.edu>
Subject: [CUNY Academic Commons - Support #16573] "Return to top" button

Issue #16573 has been updated by Marilyn Weber.
_

Thanks Marilyn. We're aware of this and have already notified IT. Basically any site that is hosted on the GC will have the "From" email name and address be from "CUNYGC Linux Service" (linux.svc@gc.cuny.edu).

We'll see if they are able to address this.

Just an update, I noticed that the "From" name and address has reverted back to before, but IT hasn't updated the support ticket yet. Maybe they are still testing things.