Support #23070
closedemails to groups bouncing back
0%
Description
Hello Commons Help --
My messages to the DH MA Program and Data Analysis and Vis MS Program groups are getting kicked back this last week — nothing is going through. Let me know if any specific details are needed.
Thanks,
Jason
Jason Nielsen
Academic Program Coordinator, M.A. Program in Digital Humanities & M.S. Program in Data Analysis and Visualization
CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, Room 5307
New York, NY 10016
From: Mail Delivery System <Mailer-Daemon@i-069b23fd237c2e30f.mta1vsmtp.sd.aws-usw2b.prd.sparkpost>
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2025 8:24 PM
To: datavisprogram@groups.commons.gc.cuny.edu <datavisprogram@groups.commons.gc.cuny.edu>
Subject: Undeliverable: Mail Delivery Failure
This message was created automatically by the mail system (ecelerity).
A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:
datavisprogram@groups.commons.gc.cuny.edu (while not connected): 550 554 5.4.7 [internal] exceeded max retries without delivery
Updated by Boone Gorges 4 months ago
- Category name set to Reply By Email
- Assignee set to Raymond Hoh
Updated by Raymond Hoh 4 months ago
This is related to Cloudflare blocking the inbound POST response from SparkPost to the Commons. Will create a new ticket with Reclaim to look into this.
Updated by Raymond Hoh 4 months ago
Reclaim has added SparkPost's hostname to the firewall's allow list, but after some quick tests, that doesn't seem to have addressed the issue. I've reached out to SparkPost support for more details.
We might have to set up another inbound email provider if SparkPost no longer allows inbound functionality on our grandfathered free account tier. See previously, https://redmine.gc.cuny.edu/issues/22411#note-5.
In the meantime, Marilyn, please tell Jason to login to the Commons to post new forum topics temporarily while we look into this matter.
Updated by Raymond Hoh 4 months ago
Some updates: I've been in contact with SparkPost support, but I haven't heard back from them since the 24th. I've just pinged them again.
With that being said, I'm preparing some steps to switch our reply-by-email inbound provider from SparkPost to Mandrill. We first began using RBE with Mandrill, but switched to SparkPost when Mandrill were acquired by Mailchimp. Back then, the Mandrill acquisition meant that a subscription was required with Mailchimp in order to continue using Mandrill's inbound service, but it looks like Mailchimp now offers a free, transactional demo mode that might be advantageous for us. I've done some light RBE testing with Mandrill over the weekend and things are working, but there is a limit of 100 inbound emails per day. For our usage, this works for us as RBE doesn't exceed ~15 emails at most per day. This is based on RBE logs since April.
If we do not hear back from SparkPost or if our account is no longer allowed to use inbound webhooks, we'll move forward with Mandrill. The alternative is switching to Sendgrid to utilize their free, 60-day trial while I work on adding support for a new inbound provider to RBE.
Updated by Raymond Hoh 4 months ago
- Status changed from New to Reporter Feedback
- Target version set to Not tracked
SparkPost support got back to me and said that our SparkPost API key was lacking the proper API permissions and that we should try giving the API key full permissions to see if that addresses the issue or not. I can confirm that this advice worked. Previously, our API key was using only a subset of the permissions, but something must have changed in their API recently that requires the API key to use full permissions now. Rather than press the matter, I'm glad that this doesn't require us to change inbound email providers :)
Marilyn, please ask Jason to try replying or posting by email again.
Updated by Raymond Hoh 4 months ago
- Status changed from Reporter Feedback to Resolved
Great! Glad that worked!