Office 365 Unable to Autorespond to Website Generated (Contact Us form) Emails?

[firelogictech]

Hello All:

I have a mutual client that I share with a website developer who uses this platform for the client's ecommerce site. We recently have migrated the client's email needs over to Office 365 (from CPANEL hosted Horde), and now there is a key function of how autoresponses used to be able to go out against website generated messages (for example, from their Contact Us page).

When webmail was hosted by HORDE on the same server as Zen Cart, they were able to have auto responses sent out using Vacation Mode functionality that bounced to the end users who submitted Contact Us messages on the website.

Now after Office 365 took over for email, the messages make it from the Contact Us form into the email inbox of my client, but auto responses are failing to send out to these messages.

After some lengthy research, it seems that this is due to the fact that the "From" address of these messages is set to the same address as the account the emails are being sent to. Office 365 is not using the "Reply To" email to bounce messages, but looking at the "From" field -- whereas it matches the account being hit, and decides there is no need to send an auto response since it sees the emails as coming from itself.

How have others gotten around this issue when using Office 365 (or any outside email platform) in conjunction with Zen Cart and having auto responses to website submissions get pushed? The web developer and I are puzzled/stumped here. As much as I've tried to manipulate how Office 365 handles these auto responses, there is no way to bounce messages properly when the "From" address on these PHP generated emails come in matching the account we are trying to auto respond from.

Changing the email address on the From field to say, a Shared Mailbox address on office 365, doesn't change the equation at all. The "From" address still is not properly set to the outside third party's address, and so Office 365 doesn't bounce an auto reply.

Any help here is appreciated. Hoping someone else relies on Vacation Mode/Auto Response functionality from their email platform to bounce automated messages to outsiders. Thanks in advance!

[swguy]

Do you have a support contact with Office365? They might be able to shed some light.

I too have seen autoresponder issues with Zen Cart email even when sent using sendmail, so I'm not sure the issue is necessarily with Office365; they just might have more experience with this kind of thing.

[firelogictech]

We are entitled to standard support from Microsoft and if I have to engage them I will do so. However, I think the limitation is more Zen Cart facing due to the emails being addressed as coming from the same email. So technically I don't believe this is a "bug" as moreso of a limitation with Zen Cart email pushes.

Posted this as I was curious how others who have hosted email integrating with Zen Cart and how their experience has been with auto responders.

[barco57]

You run into a problem with email deliverability when you change the "from" to be the email address of the submitter of the contact form.

For example, if the submitter is a AT Yahoo email address, and you have changed the "from" to be their email address when the email is sent from your website's server, the receiving email server is required to check DMARC records. Yahoo has DMARC records set to "reject" meaning if the receiving email servers receive an email that says it is "from" an AT Yahoo email address but it was NOT sent from a Yahoo email server then the receiving server is to reject that email

This is why the "reply to" exists.

Edit: apparently you can not put @ Yahoo.com together here, it turns it into a bunch of ####

[swguy]

@barco57 if I understand you correctly, you are recommending changing

zen_mail($send_to_name, $send_to_email, EMAIL_SUBJECT, $text_message, $name, $email_address, $html_msg, 'contact_us');

to

zen_mail($send_to_name, $send_to_email, EMAIL_SUBJECT, $text_message, STORE_NAME, EMAIL_FROM, $html_msg, 'contact_us', '', $name, $email_address);

in includes/modules/pages/contact_us/header_php.php
Is this correct?

[barco57]

Is that what I was suggesting? Didn't realize I was suggesting anything. Just pointing out that if the "from" does not match the server/domain it is being sent from then you can run into deliverability problems, because of DMARC settings as in the case of yahoo email addresses.

[dbltoe]

For those wondering if your settings for SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are correct for their site, Google will do the check for you.

If you have a gmail account, send an e-mail to your gmail account from your store's e-mail. Open Gmail in your browser and open the e-mail from your store. Click on the three dots (More) and select Show Original.

The most important part of the provided information is that your want the From: and DKIM URLs to match.

There are also online tools for this but using them might get you some future spam.

[swguy]

Is that what I was suggesting? Didn't realize I was suggesting anything.

I was thinking this might be a patch the OP could try to get his autoresponder working.

[swguy]

Follow up: The idea from @barco works like a champ. See Post #5 for change details.

[lat9]

Follow up: The idea from @barco works like a champ. See Post #5 for change details.

... except for the fact that the order-creation emails are also failing and those send from STORE_NAME and EMAIL_FROM, so I don't see how this is a solution to Lloyd's issue.