DC said:
Hello,
We have a user who uses the read receipt option in Outlook 2007. Recently
he has been complaining that he does not get as many read reciepts back
anymore. He said they have dramtically stopped about a difference of 95%.
Nothing has been changed on the Exchange side so what else could be causing
the problem of him not recieving all of his read reciepts back?
Thanks!!
Simple. He has nuisanced his recipients with REQUESTS for read receipts.
The default configuration in their e-mail client issues a prompt when that
request is received (which is via a header in the e-mail). This prompting
alerted them that someone wanted to spy on when they read their e-mails. As
a consequence, the users became aware that tracking was a feature of their
e-mail client that they could TURN off - and they did. So now all those
recipients that were nuisanced before have configured their e-mail clients
to IGNORE any such requests for a read receipt. They got educated because
of the nuisance initiated by your "user".
Unless the recipients are within the same company and there also exists a
policy regarding the use of read receipts (when they may be used, that every
employee must leave tracking enabled) then your user has no way to force his
recipients to acknowledge a *request* to send a read receipt. However,
while a company may require their employees to configure the tracking option
to Always send a read receipt (or it gets pushed by policies), the default
configuration for Exchange, I believe, is to strip that header from e-mails
that go to outside recipients or come from outside senders through the
company's mail server. That is, the header gets stripped from any e-mails
sent outside the company and it gets stripped from e-mails coming into the
company from outsiders.
You should full well understand how read receipts work if this "user" is
relying upon you for their Outlook support. My bet is this user's
recipients got alerted by the prompt that asks if they want to send a read
receipt; however, that prompt actually prodded them to DISABLE (by ignoring)
any such requests for a read receipt.