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Your LimeSurvey version: 3.28.22+220802
Own server or LimeSurvey hosting: own server
Survey theme/template: vanilla
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Hi there,

I don't know if this is the right place for posting my problem, anyway I hope someone can help me or point me in the right direction.

A survey has an owner and an administrator. For the administrator email my LM installation is asigning the owner's email address.
When trying to send notifications (basic or detailed) my LM installation uses the administrator address as "sender" and "from". That is the email address of the survey's owner.

I don't know if it should work like this or we have something missconfigured.

Anyway, the problem is that, for security reasons, my smtp server does not allow to send an email from an address different from the identification user. It means all notifications fail. No survey's owner can recieve email notifications.

Furthermore, the survey participant recieve a "$time CLIENT -> SERVER: QUIT" message. If is a basic notification the quit message is printed before the End message, if it'is detailed notification, the quit text is printed after the End message. For both notifications, it's printed twice.

Thanx in advance for any reply

I see that quit messages can be avoided by deactivating the smtp debug option, but the problem still remains that notifications are not sent.

I can't imagine this problem hasn't arise yet, my only option is that we have something misconfigured, but can't figure out what.

will very much appreaciate any hint or help.

A survey has an owner and an administrator. For the administrator email my LM installation is asigning the owner's email address.
When trying to send notifications (basic or detailed) my LM installation uses the administrator address as "sender" and "from". That is the email address of the survey's owner.

Sorry, I am confused there.

Afaik, in LS3 all email is sent under the Default site admin email. There is no way you can send it via other email accounts. So I don't understand the problem.

holch wrote:

Sorry, I am confused there.

Afaik, in LS3 all email is sent under the Default site admin email. There is no way you can send it via other email accounts. So I don't understand the problem.

Hi Holch,

Thank you very much for your answer. Before posting here I argued for two days with the colleague who made the install that this couldn't be, no way emails are being sent from other address than the site admin email. But it's happening. The image below is from an attempt to send an invite:

 

...

This screenshot is so tiny, it is not really possible to read the error messages, even opening it up.

But it basically says that the user for authentication is different to the sender, if I can see it right.

Without seeing your email settings it is difficult to say anything, I guess. But I am also not an expert on this.

I assume that the "liz.alfonso@...." Email address is NOT the email address that is the administrator email of the installation, correct?

My (amateur) guess is, that the Administrator Email of the installation is different to the email set as the email to send emails from.

Now your email server doesn't allow the sender of an email to be set differently to the actual email sending it.

I guess, the only solution is: Set the email where the emails are sent from the same as the administrator email. Or change the rules in your email server.

But as I said, not an expert on this. Maybe someone with more experience can help as well. Or the admin of your email server can have a look at it. He/she will know what works and what won't when seeing the configurations in Limesurvey, I guess.

holch wrote:

This screenshot is so tiny, it is not really possible to read the error messages, even opening it up.

But it basically says that the user for authentication is different to the sender, if I can see it right.

Without seeing your email settings it is difficult to say anything, I guess. But I am also not an expert on this.

 

Sorry but I had to reduce the size of the image because it has to be smaller than 0.5 MB
 

holch wrote:

I assume that the "liz.alfonso@...." Email address is NOT the email address that is the administrator email of the installation, correct?

My (amateur) guess is, that the Administrator Email of the installation is different to the email set as the email to send emails from.

Now your email server doesn't allow the sender of an email to be set differently to the actual email sending it.

I guess, the only solution is: Set the email where the emails are sent from the same as the administrator email. Or change the rules in your email server.

But as I said, not an expert on this. Maybe someone with more experience can help as well. Or the admin of your email server can have a look at it. He/she will know what works and what won't when seeing the configurations in Limesurvey, I guess.
 

Thank you very much for your interest, Holch. I guess I should post my problem in another forum.
 

I guess I should post my problem in another forum.

Not sure what kind of forum this should be. If you mean in another subforum here on Limesurvey.org, then NO. If someone of the regular posters has a solution, they will answer here. My guess is that no one has a solution. Also, some of the regular posters who might have knowledge regarding this are probably on summer holidays, as August is for example the main summer holiday month in France, etc.

holch wrote:

Afaik, in LS3 all email is sent under the Default site admin email. There is no way you can send it via other email accounts. So I don't understand the problem.
 

There is only one SMTP-Account, which is globally for one LimeSurvey installation and that cannot be changed surveywise.

Not so sure what you mean by that.  "Afaik, in LS3 all email is sent under the Default site admin email"
The default email address of the site administrator and it is used for system messages and contact options
In every survey there are "General survey settings", where you can set the "Administrator email address" and "Bounce email address".
manual.limesurvey.org/General_settings#Admin_email

So check if the Admin-Email in the general settings of the survey is not valid to the SMTP account you use.

LimeSurvey is missing a section to allow to add more than one SMTP account. Then you could select a different SMTP-Account in every survey.
The feature request is waiting for all of you (since 2015 bugs.limesurvey.org/view.php?id=9499

Check out  smtpByUser as well:
gitlab.com/SondagesPro/mailing/smtpByUser






 

jelo wrote:

There is only one SMTP-Account, which is globally for one LimeSurvey installation and that cannot be changed surveywise.

Not so sure what you mean by that.  "Afaik, in LS3 all email is sent under the Default site admin email"
The default email address of the site administrator and it is used for system messages and contact options
In every survey there are "General survey settings", where you can set the "Administrator email address" and "Bounce email address".
manual.limesurvey.org/General_settings#Admin_email

So check if the Admin-Email in the general settings of the survey is not valid to the SMTP account you use.

LimeSurvey is missing a section to allow to add more than one SMTP account. Then you could select a different SMTP-Account in every survey.
The feature request is waiting for all of you (since 2015 bugs.limesurvey.org/view.php?id=9499

Check out  smtpByUser as well:
gitlab.com/SondagesPro/mailing/smtpByUser

 

Thanks jelo.

Problem is our smtp server won't admit any message where sender is not the autentication user. And we wouldn't want to have user's email's passwords stored either.

Looking at gitlab.com/SondagesPro/mailing/smtpByUser I find: "In global settings, you just have to choose if user must have own smtp settings or not."
It's refering to LS' global settings or smtpByUser's?


 

And we wouldn't want to have user's email's passwords stored either.

That's a little bit like wanting to shower, but avoiding to get wet.

If you want to send an email via SMTP, you usually need a password. So if you want to send the emails via a specific email, you'll need to use the password.

So it seems like the way Limesurvey 3 currently works (I was not aware that the emails are send in the name of the Survey owner, but via the Admin's email, I thought would all be via the admins email straight) will not work for you with your current settings of the SMTP server.

You might have to think about changing the way emails are sent, e.g. from SMTP to PHP. However, the other emailing methods often bring other disadvantages.

Another option could be that you send the emails manually through an email client (In Thunderbird you can use MailMerge to create individualized emails quickly, I guess Outlook will have something similar as well) or with another mass email tool. You can create the token links via Excel quite quickly (have a look at the structure of the token emails by looking at the little cog wheel in the participant table and then use CONCATENATE() to bring the . Not as clean as sending directly from the Limesurvey installation, but we are trying to find solutions here that can work in your configuration.

I am not sure if SMTPbyuser will help you if you don't want the users SMTP data stored in Limesurvey. Because if you don't, it will fall back to the standard email, so you gained nothing.

I haven't used the the plugin yet, but I think I'll make a little test soon.