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Automated Notifications Not Sending – Randomly

Posted: September 14, 2017 at 9:58 am


mpurse

September 14, 2017 at 9:58 am

It’s just become apparent that not all notifications for upcoming events are being sent – on a per event basis (not per attendee). I cannot see pattern as to why some are sent and some are not so I can’t find a cause.

  • This topic was modified 6 years, 7 months ago by  Josh. Reason: moving to pre-release forum


Josh

  • Support Staff

September 14, 2017 at 3:40 pm

OK thanks for testing this and reporting, we’ll see what we can find that would cause some events to not trigger notifications.


mpurse

September 18, 2017 at 10:49 am

I actually don’t think this is random. It seems to have just stopped sending suddenly.


Josh

  • Support Staff

September 18, 2017 at 10:54 am

It seems to have stopped? Does that mean that no messages are getting logged in the Messages Activity page?


mpurse

September 18, 2017 at 10:55 am

Not automated reminders. All other messages are sending fine.


Josh

  • Support Staff

September 18, 2017 at 11:45 am

May I ask are you using the Automated Upcoming Event Notification template, the Automated Upcoming Datetime Notification template, or both?

Here’s a summary for each of those:

Automated Upcoming Event Notification

This message type automates sending messages to registrations for an upcoming event. Messages are sent at the threshold you define (eg. 3 days before) prior to the earliest datetime attached to the event. Other datetimes on the event have no bearing on when this message type is triggered. Messages for this message type are sent to approved registrations and are only triggered for upcoming and/or sold out, and published upcoming events.

Automated Upcoming Datetime Notification

This message type automates sending messages to registrations for an upcoming datetime. Messages are sent at the threshold you define (eg. 3 days before) prior to a datetime on an event. Messages for this message type are sent to approved registrations and are only triggered for datetimes on upcoming and/or sold out, and published upcoming events. Note that this will send a message for each datetime on the event.


mpurse

September 18, 2017 at 12:30 pm

We’ve got Automated Upcoming Event Notification turned on for four days in advance of an event. We have new events starting several times a week.

All was working just fine until the last wordpress and EE update last week.


Josh

  • Support Staff

September 18, 2017 at 1:52 pm

OK thanks for testing this and reporting, we’ll see what we can find that would cause all events to not trigger notifications.


mpurse

September 21, 2017 at 4:46 am

Any news on this? Automated reminders are still not sending at all for us.


Josh

  • Support Staff

September 21, 2017 at 8:07 am

We have not found anything new. You mention that the messages were working before. Besides updating to the new versions of WP and EE, do you know what’s changed on the website since that point? For example any upgrades to the server, new plugins added?

I checked on our testing site and the automated messages are sending there. Here’s a screenshot of the messages activity list:

https://www.evernote.com/l/AARHHbWd5yVBI7oD3sEpQg8E6655HWwltxE

If you check the message activity list on your site are the Automated messages listed there?


mpurse

September 21, 2017 at 8:15 am

No other changes that I know of.

I can see all message activity. The only messages going are the registration and payment message (so everything except the new automated event reminders basically).


Josh

  • Support Staff

September 21, 2017 at 8:30 am

Can you double-check and make sure the Automated Notifications message type is activated and that the message contexts are set to schedule and send?

Also, you can install the WP Crontrol plugin and check the Tools > Cron Events page to see whether there’s a scheduled task for sending the automated reminder message. You should see the following listed under Hook Name:
AHEE__EventEspresso_AutomatedEventNotifications_core_tasks_Scheduler__daily_check


mpurse

September 21, 2017 at 8:35 am

I just installed that and got this: http://awesomescreenshot.com/0076di9se6


Josh

  • Support Staff

September 21, 2017 at 8:43 am

That’s good. That’s showing that in about 8 hours it’s scheduled to check for upcoming events that need reminders sent. You can actually click on the Run Now link and that will trigger the check for right now. After you click the Run Now link you can head over to the Event Espresso > Messages > Messages Activity page to check for new reminder messages in the queue.

Also, were you able to verify whether the automated reminder messages are set to activated and Scheduling for this template is: On?


mpurse

September 21, 2017 at 8:49 am

Automated upcoming event reminders are ON (I don’t use date time reminders) http://awesomescreenshot.com/01b6diabeb

I clicked on ‘run now’ but no reminder messages were sent.


Josh

  • Support Staff

September 21, 2017 at 8:58 am

Are you able to verify whether the Scheduling for the template is: On? You can go in and edit the templates, then look over to the right side of the page to verify those settings.


mpurse

September 21, 2017 at 8:59 am

Yes, scheduling is ON. Set for four days in advance of event.


Josh

  • Support Staff

September 21, 2017 at 9:07 am

Thanks for checking. We’ll keep checking to see what we can find that would cause all events to not trigger notifications. This may delay the official release of the add-on if we can’t find it.


Darren Ethier

October 3, 2017 at 4:30 pm

Hi @mpurse,

I’m the principle developer behind the Automated Upcoming Event Notifications add-on. I’m puzzled by your report where messages just stopped sending for this add-on since I haven’t been able to reproduce.

Since you are using the Automated Upcoming Event message type, I just want to reiterate the expectations for behaviour to ensure that’s not what may be the issue here.

When the scheduled cron event for the Upcoming Notification fires, the following happens:

1. A query is done to find any active message template groups for that message type (so that would cover any default + custom groups that might be active).
2. The set “schedule threshold” for each message template group is retrieved.
3. A query is generated that checks the database for any Events where the earliest datetime of that event falls within the set threshold for sending messages.
4. A query is also done to check any registrations for matching events that have not already received notifications.
5. Notifications are prepped for all retrieved registrations matching the conditions and marked as having had notifications generated (so they will not show up for any future queries while the that datetime is still within the threshold).

So now that we’ve established expected behaviour, I have a couple questions regarding your particular setup.

When you said “We have new events starting several times a week.”, in using the term event, do you mean you have separate Event posts setup or are you referring to the date time within the event setup?

IF you do have completely separate events setup (as opposed to multiple dates and times on one event), the title of this ticket has “Automated Notifications Not Sending Randomly”, does that mean that there is an initial set of automated notifications that do go out for that event but then any future registrations on that event don’t receive notifications?


mpurse

October 8, 2017 at 8:08 am

Thanks, I’m clear on what to expect.

The automated event reminder notification either goes out four days in advance of a forthcoming (as we would expect), or it doesn’t go out at all.

What we think might be happening is the server is disallowing cron jobs. It’s the only explanation we can find for the sporadic success of the messages.

Does that sound relatively realistic as an explanation to you? All other automated notifications (registrations, payment notifications etc) go out just fine the instant that their triggers are fired.

It’s just the automated event reminders that are sporadically failing, which we think is the only type of message that relies on a cron job. Does that seem right to you?


Tony

  • Support Staff

October 9, 2017 at 3:50 am

The standard messages system can also use cron, but it depends on the settings you have.

If you go to Event Espresso -> Messages -> Settings

You’ll find the option ‘Generate and send all messages:’

What is that set to on your site?

If it’s ‘On separate request’ then its using Cron and you would likely run into problems with normal messages if cron was the problem.


mpurse

October 9, 2017 at 5:27 am

It’s set to “On separate request’.

Same thing happening again. All the reminders for events happening weekend went out. But an event happening tomorrow – no reminder sent.


mpurse

October 12, 2017 at 4:38 am

So, to give you an idea of the problem… http://awesomescreenshot.com/0cd6durgeb

The screen shot shows the events for this week. Out of seven events, only two triggered the automated reminders.

Am I the only one having the problem?


Darren Ethier

October 12, 2017 at 6:14 am

I visited your site and made a screenshot of one of your listings: https://www.evernote.com/l/AANp3jeCd-dBToAl5FjAH1RknCpcYWdNyukB/image.png

From your listings it appears that you have things setup so the courses are an “event” and the datetimes in the event are the individual course times for that course. Keep in mind that with the automated event notifications, messages only go out once for that entire event (so even if there are multiple dates and times for that event, there will only be one notification).

I suspect that may be what’s happening here. If that’s the case, then what you will want to use instead is the automated datetimes message type. All the datetimes for an event can still use a common template for the entire event, but notifications will go out at whatever period you have set before the datetime.


mpurse

October 13, 2017 at 1:14 am

I’ve set date times to be live as well to try and catch all. But I don’t think that is the reason, otherwise why would some send and not others?

Apart from two specific events that we run, everything else is set up as a individual event with its own unique date time so that it will display on our website as such.

Automated reminders went out again last night (no idea why) to the same events and the same ones were not sent.

I’ve checked individual settings on each of the events that didn’t get sent and cannot see anything that would set them apart.


Darren Ethier

October 13, 2017 at 5:49 am

I’ve set date times to be live as well to try and catch all. But I don’t think that is the reason, otherwise why would some send and not others?

The Upcoming Event notifications will only send to registrations once for the entire event (event if there are multiple datetimes). The Upcoming Datetime notifications will send to registrations on each datetime on an event. So that’s why I was asking specifics because (while you only had upcoming event notifications active) if the events you are not receiving messages for have multiple datetimes, did receive and initial batch of messages, but did not receive any further batches after that, it might explain what was going on.

I’m only eliminating possibilities here. Your reply indicates that’s likely not it.

I can suggest to you though, if you have ANY events that have multiple datetimes on them (while the rest have single datetimes) and you want the registrations on each datetime for the events with multiple datetimes to receive messages, that it would be better for you to turn off automated upcoming event notifications and just leave the automated datetime notification on. Otherwise, registrants for events will get both an event notification and datetime notification for the earliest datetime.


mpurse

October 13, 2017 at 5:57 am

There are no multiple date times (we have one event exception to this but its not even worth discussing…). I wouldn’t mind them getting both notifications, it’s getting none that is the problem. 🙂

Am I the only person experiencing this? Want to take a look yourself?


Darren Ethier

October 16, 2017 at 5:06 pm

Hi, sorry for the delay, somewhat recently there was an update released for the add-on on the PRC channel, can you confirm what version you have installed? If you don’t have the latest installed, can you please update to the latest and see if that helps?

One thing you will have to note with the new version is that the schedules are now per context (labelled recipient). So that means you can have a separate schedule for admin notifications than that for the registrant notifications.


mpurse

October 22, 2017 at 2:02 pm

I’ve updated it, followed your instructions.

Last weekend we had 9 events scheduled but only 6 successfully had the event notification emails sent.


Josh

  • Support Staff

October 25, 2017 at 8:06 am

Hi there,

If you go and check the Event Espresso > Messages activity table, does it show that all of the emails for the 6 events getting sent at the same time or were those sent out in smaller batches at different times? They may need to add some batch processing to avoid server timeouts or limits.


mpurse

October 25, 2017 at 8:13 am

All at the same time. Well, technically they went at 12:07 and 12:08 but that seems like one batch to me.


Josh

  • Support Staff

October 25, 2017 at 9:09 am

Yes indeed. So one of the items on the to-do list is add some batch processing so the emails do not all get sent out at all of the same time. When this gets added to another iteration of the beta we will update this topic.


mpurse

November 2, 2017 at 4:24 am

OK, thanks. This ‘feels’ like the answer to the problem. But I can’t say for sure until we test your update.

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