\cfusion\mail\undelivr

You know that directory? Ever seen it? Well, if so, when was the last time you had a look at it… last week? Last month? Last century? Welcome to the club ;-)We all know that problem: if a cfmail tag is called to send out an e-mail, CF puts the generated cfmail-file into the spooler. If, for whatever reason, the mail cannot be sent, the file is moved to the undelivr-folder. Period.

If you also administer your server(s), you’ll probably check that folder once in a while, move the undelivered files back to the spooler and check back next time… or week/month/year/life. That generally results in sales persons asking “why the hell did that email need four month to be delivered???”. And hey, they’re even right!

At Henkel, we’re currently running a bunch of CF 5 and CFMX servers in several clustered environments. From time to time, the smtp gateways may be unreachable, and even though we’re checking email address entries before doing a cfmail, some very eager persons manage to misspell them…

To sum it up: I decided to write a template that does the dirty work for me:

• Move all files from the undelivr-folder back to the spooler
• Keep track of them in a database
• Log that action
• Count how many times each mail file has been moved back
• If not sent out for 10 times, move it to a “junkyard” folder

If a mail failed to be sent out for 10 times, there’s probably something wrong with the mail address. Assuming I call the template every 12 hours, a 5-day-timespan is covered, and most likely (or hopefully) the smtp gateway is NOT the reason after five days of sending in vain 😉

So give it a try – originally designed to work on the Henkel systems, I did a quick rewrite of the code to make it work on standard CF machines.

Let me know if it works for you!

Download file

Update: V1.10: Fixes for CFMX7