Outlook Automation - Deleted Unread Receipt Object?

[JRB-Bldr]

To all the gurus who have automated Outlook via VFP...

I am looking for a means to get back an Outlook 'receipt' on those emails which were Deleted Unopened.

Yes, I know about Outlook's MailItem ReadReceiptRequested object, but that only tells me that the email has been Read.

I'd like to get a 'receipt' when the email has been Deleted without having been Read.

I know that this can be done somehow since some of my clients have reported seeing a report of this nature, but I am not sure if it is possible with a single Outlook Object or via something in an Exchange server or what.

Any help you might have would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
JRB-Bldr

 

[Mike Lewis]

JRB-Bldr,

I might be totally wrong about this, but I would have thought it was impossible. After all, how can your local copy of Outlook know what is happening on another computer, which could be running any email software, and could be anywhere in the world.

You would need the recipient's email client to be configured to send some sort of message back go you when the user deletes an unread email. Even if that was a common feature in email software, you would have no way of forcing the recipient to do that.

Even the traditional read receipts are unreliable because they rely on the recipient enabling this feature in his software.

If I'm wrong about this, I would welcome someone to correct me.

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk

 

[JRB-Bldr]

Mike - "You would need the recipient's email client to be configured to send some sort of message back to you"

That is exactly what the Outlook.MailItem.ReadReceiptRequested object does.
It requests that the recipient's email client send back a receipt to the sender. However this particular 'receipt' would only be sent when the email was Opened (i.e. Read).

Personally I have my email client (not Outlook) set to notify me when these requests are issued and I can then manually choose to comply with the request or not. And I get them from time to time from various senders.

However I am looking for a variation on this which would send the 'receipt' on a Delete UnRead (or UnOpened).

The 'average' recipient is not aware of how to disable this and my clients would like to know when their employees merely Delete and email sent to them without opening or reading the contents. Absolutely reliable - No. But for most users, sufficiently workable.

Thanks,
JRB-Bldr

 

[Mike Lewis]

That is exactly what the Outlook.MailItem.ReadReceiptRequested object does.

Yes, but my point is that you have no control over whether the recipient email client respects that setting, or whether the user has enabled it.

I agree with you that the average recipient might not be aware of this. But how do you know their email client enables the setting by default? I have just checked my own email program, and I see that there is an option, "Never send a read receipt", which is enabled. I don't specifically remember enabling it, but it is enabled nevertheless.

You've also got to remember that not everyone uses standard email programs like Outlook and Outlook Express. In the Compuserve client software, for example, there is no distinction between receiving an email and opening it. If you wanted to delete it without reading it, you delete it on the server, which means that there is no opportunity to send the receipt. (OK, you're going to say Compuserve is a very unusual case. Fair enough. I'm just trying to make the point that not everyone uses mainstream software.)

As I said at the outset, I might be totally wrong about all this. If so, I hope somebody who knows more about it than I do will jump in.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk

 

[TamarGranor]

Perhaps the other receipt you're hearing about is the "received receipt." You can request a receipt that indicates that the message was received by the client, as well as the "read receipt" that indicates that someone opened the message.

Tamar

 

[JRB-Bldr]

Mike, I do agree with you about the how much you can (or cannot) rely on the receipt from any individual recipient. But if my client wants to use this as a tool to monitor their employees behavior, then who am I to argue with them. They rely on it already within their own organization and am now wanting me to do so for the work we do for them.

Tamar, I am aware of both of the 'normal' receipt objects
Outlook.MailItem.OriginatorDeliveryReportRequested
Outlook.MailItem.ReadReceiptRequested

Both of these will do part of what I am looking to accomplish, but not everything.

Maybe it cannot be done via VFP Automation and Outlook Objects.
But I wanted to see if anyone out there knew of a means to get the job done.

Thanks,
JRB-Bldr

 

[Mike Lewis]

JRB-Bldr,

if my client wants to use this as a tool to monitor their employees behavior

Well,that puts an entirely different light on it. I was assuming you wanted to be able to monitor the deletion of emails that you send to any recipient -- anywhere in the world. If you are now saying that all the recipients are in the same organisation -- in other words, you have some control over their email setup -- then it becomes easier.

In fact, if all the employees are using Outlook, you can write VBA code to monitor everything the user does, such as reading a message, and deleting it. Within that code, you could write a record to a file, which a VFP app could subsequently extract and report on.

Alternatively, you could write a VFP program that runs in the background on the user's machine. The program could use EVENTHANDLER() to fire a VFP event whenever the user reads or deletes a message in Outlook.

There are also third-party products available that let an employer monitor everything the users do in their email client and web browser. Maybe one of those would solve the problem.

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk

 

[JRB-Bldr]

Mike - yes, all of the recipients are employees who work for one organization, but as independent, licensed agents and in their own separate locations all over the country. That makes incorporating on-site code mostly un-workable unless the central office mandated it (and they wouldn't do that).

I was hoping to be able to 'trigger' some 'standard' action(s) within their Outlook no matter where they were located so that the central office could determine what happened to the important notices that were being sent out. An agent saying that they never received it would no longer be an 'excuse'.

Since our office (a vendor to the central office) is being tasked with sending out the documents I wanted to find out a means of reporting back to our client, the central office.

Just tracking if the document was delivered as intended would be a start and it can be done via the Outlook.MailItem.OriginatorDeliveryReportRequested object.

Since Deleting a received email is a manual operation (sometimes by intent and other times by mistake) if I could track that the document was Delivered and then Deleted prior to having been opened, it would go the next step in delivering the central office the report that they want.

Thanks for your suggestions.
JRB-Bldr