Lotus Geek :: SnTT: Return Receipts

Category Show-n-Tell Thursday
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I have a couple of pet peeves when it comes to email, and I want to cover one of them today - and what I do about it. I really hate receiving emails with Return Receipt enabled. I dislike Return Receipts because I feel like the person believes I won't follow up in a timely manner - to me return receipts are generally rude. Now I realize that sometimes they are helpful, such as when you are having mail delivery problems and you want to ensure delivery; but in general I think they are rude. So, I remove the thing that irritates me - and if it irritates you, I'll show you how alleviate it too.

Removing Return Receipts
I have modified my Inbox to support the detection and removal of Return Receipts in a simple fashion. When I receive an email with a Return Receipt I see the following icon in my inbox:

The bomb icon indicates return receipt has been enabled for this email

To remove the return receipt, I simply select the email and choose Tools/Remove Return Receipt..., as shown below:

Remove Return Receipt action

The action Remove Return Receipt removes the return receipt flag before I open the email

Here's how you can add the same functionality to your inbox as well.

First, let me recommend that you make these changes to the TEMPLATE from which your mail file inherits its design. If you attempt to change the Inbox folder directly in your mail file it will "break" the automatic delivery of mail into your inbox. If you make the change to the template, then refresh the design, it continues to work as expected.

To add the bomb icon to the inbox folder follow these simple directions:

Edit the Inbox folder in Domino Designer
Select the 12th column, which is the small one next to the Subject column

@If(@TextToNumber(@Version) > 122;

@If(@IsAvailable(ReturnReceipt) & ReturnReceipt = "1"; 91; @TextToNumber(@Version) > 122;

To add the Remove Return Receipt action follow these simple directions:

Go to the Actions pane in the Inbox folder design in Designer
Expand the Tools action
Select the "Calendar Cleanup" subaction, and right-click it
Select "Create Action...". The new action should appear right below the Calendar Cleanup action
Name the new action "Remove Return Receipt..."
Add the following formula to the action formula:

FIELD ReturnReceipt := @DeleteField
Save and close the Inbox folder
Refresh the design of your mail file to move your changes over

That's it! Now, there are many ways to do this - and if you would like to share, I'd love to hear how you handle this in your own mail file.

Enjoy!

Rock
**Wouldn't it be nice if whenever we messed up our life we could simply press Ctrl Alt Delete and start all over?

Comments

1 - Time for me to disagree somewhat, as I did in my post some time back entitled "E-Mail Return Receipts: Rude Intrusion of Necessary Tool?" (http://www.controlscaddy.com/A55A69/bccaddyblog.nsf/plinks/CBYE-65CU6H
)

As I said in that posting:

"To me it is not a case of not trusting the individual receiving the mail, but a self-protection move as there have been times in my career where this paper trail was essential."

Anyone who has worked in government (after the invention and use of email) should understand what I am saying and quite possibly agree

Posted by Christopher Byrne At 02:05:45 PM On 05/26/2006 | - Website - |

2 - Really Good It worked for me

Posted by Raj At 03:08:30 PM On 11/17/2006 | - Website - |

3 - I just always have my mail set to local. Then before I replicate, I always check my outbox.. and remove things I don't want to go out.

It has always been a habit o mine to check outbox before sending email.

Posted by Betsy Thiede At 11:49:30 AM On 05/25/2006 | - Website - |

4 - @2 - Same here. The OpenNTF template has a setting to always remove RR, prompt at Memo open, or alway honor RR. I just turn mine off.

@Rock - I hate them too. It makes me feel like the person doesn't think I do my job!

Posted by Chris Whisonant At 12:51:52 PM On 05/25/2006 | - Website - |

5 - Ulrich, I don't see any reason why it should be illegal to remove a return receipt in Germany. Because the mail gets modified?
A mail gets modified (in Notes) when you answer to it or forward it, so this would be illegal, too.

Rock, thanks for the solution. Something like this should be part of the standard mail design in Notes.

Posted by Oliver Regelmann At 08:15:35 PM On 05/25/2006 | - Website - |

6 - >> FIELD ReturnReceipt := @DeleteField

Is it legal to remove a return receipt ? According to german law it is strictly forbidden to do so ...

It is like modifiying a written mail. Think about archiving such a mail ( you have SOX in the US )

I see another problem with RR; I got a phone call the other day where I was asked why I sent a RR; It took me a second or two. Then I found the anwer. I opened the mail in question in the mail.box to modify the wrong written receipeints name and to release the held mail.
How would I handle this in the future ? Having an indicator to show if there is a RR requested would not be helpful.

What we really need as an administrator is the ability to access mails in the mail.box and modify the senders or rcpt address if necessary without trigering an RR if requested.

Posted by Ulrich Krause At 12:59:40 PM On 05/25/2006 | - Website - |

7 - That rocks! (as in a good thing - not your name! :) )
I agree with you about return reciepts. I have customers what want all of their emails to have RR turned on - by default. UGH.

I will borrow your code and have at it! :)

Thanks!
Neil - heavy boots master!

Posted by Neil Roberts At 12:50:33 PM On 05/25/2006 | - Website - |

8 - @DominoAdmin (posting #22). Thanks for the advice. I'm not an ADMIN, just a local user (with little knowledge of Agents). I performed the steps stated and was returned with the following popup box, "Unable to determine the execution access priviledges for agent 'auto-RR-remove' on home mail server of user 'Terry'; agent may not run."

Not sure if this is any help, but within Design - Agents, dbl-clicking the above agent (to edit) gave me this popup "If you make changes to this Agent, they may be lost because the master copy of this Agent is in a different Design Template database; . . . "

Our ADMIN would rather not have users with this capability, but RRs are "generally rude".
Thanks.

Posted by Terry At 11:45:12 AM On 07/26/2006 | - Website - |

9 - Hello I work in a big company with branches all over. We use lotus notes and i am NOT a Notes admin. But I am Local I.T. can i disable return reciept feature on my lotus notes 6.2 without going into notes designer or somthing?
any help would be appreciated

Posted by Khushnood At 02:57:09 PM On 06/29/2006 | - Website - |

10 - @Rock,

Now that the SAP stuff has shipped are you now working on the mail template?

Posted by Bruce Elgort At 11:41:49 AM On 05/26/2006 | - Website - |

11 - Thanks for these instructions. I've written up my motivation and experience on coevolving.com at { Link } .

Posted by David Ing At 02:21:14 PM On 12/13/2006 | - Website - |

12 - I am a Notes Admin and have a user who doesn't want to get a Return Receipt every time the recipient opens the email. Any way to get the RR to respond just once, like the first time it is opened only?

Posted by Sharon Mason At 02:27:29 PM On 12/21/2006 | - Website - |

13 - I am a Notes Admin and have a user who doesn't want to get a Return Receipt every time the recipient opens the email. Any way to get the RR to respond just once, like the first time it is opened only?

Posted by Sharon Mason At 02:27:32 PM On 12/21/2006 | - Website - |

14 - Nice One - personally hate the things - it almost works against the sender as if I know that person attaches the rr I might not read the email until I have time - normally I scan all emails same day.

Posted by Steve Castledine At 01:00:25 PM On 05/25/2006 | - Website - |

15 - @Per Henrik - I have not seen those, but it is nice to know there are tons of ways around this annoying issue. I personally don't like Return Receipt code that fires when I open it - I would rather know ahead of time that the RR is enabled on the doc (the bomb icon), and then handle it before I open it (the action). But, to each his own - and like I said, it is good that there are many ways to handle it.

@Ulrich - I haven't seen Wolfgang's post, and I am not sure about the legality of removing RRs - but I can't see how it would be illegal in the US. I'll take a look at Wolfgang's post though. And I don't know what to do about your mail.box situation.

@Ben - yeah, I have been doing this forever too - hence the Formula solution

I just happened to be reminded of this code, and I was looking for a SnTT entry, so I decided this would make a good one.

@Chris, Mike - I knew OpenNTF had similar functionality, but now that I'm inside Big Blue I am running the "stock" mail template - especially since my latest development efforts revolve around the mail template itself, I need the one IBM ships.

@Betsy - seems like a lot of work; maybe we could talk you into using this code to make your life easier...

Thanks to everyone for the responses!

Rock

Posted by Rock At 07:06:47 PM On 05/25/2006 | - Website - |

16 - RR's are like a first scale escalation in the loser email pressure wars. As far as I'm concerned, using RR's in an attempt to pressure someone to take action sooner is strictly amateur hour and a mark of unprofessional-ism. Its the first level in an escalating series of boneheaded, amateurish, wanna-be-player moves that includes things like copying other team members, copying your boss, copying their boss, or the most bonehead move of all - copying the other person's boss's boss.

If someone pulls this crap with me, I immediately begin to seek ways to end the working relationship as quickly as I can amicably do so.

wow: aspell just corrected like half of what I just wrote. I wonder what it missed.

Posted by Andrew Pollack At 07:23:28 PM On 05/25/2006 | - Website - |

17 - I don't like RR either. I had a colleague who used to always send me email with RR. Every time I saw email from him, I used to select the doc, access the doc properties and read the $Body. Then I'd decide how I wanted to respond.

Posted by KJ At 03:12:49 PM On 05/26/2006 | - Website - |

18 - Hi Rock,
Susan Bulloch (http://www.notesgoddess.net) has created a SnTT with another solution to this:
http://hostit1.connectria.com/NotesGoddess/NotesGoddess.nsf/dx/Show-N-Tell-Entry

And a solution similar to Susans has been mentioned on developerWorks:
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/ls-BlockRetRec/index.html

Perhaps you have seen these already.

Posted by Per Henrik Lausten At 01:39:07 PM On 05/25/2006 | - Website - |

19 - I've changed my own and others inbox design many times and have never experienced any problems with mail delivery afterwards !

Posted by Klaus Terman At 10:07:48 AM On 06/06/2006 | - Website - |

20 - @Oliver - then your experience is absolutely different than mine. I find that whenever I edit the Inbox folder directly in my mail file ALL mail fails to be placed in that folder after I edit it. I have to refresh the desisn of the Inbox to fix this. I do find, however, that if I edit the design of the Inbox in the template, and then refresh the design of my mail file to add the changes to it, it works like a champ.

Does anyone have any similar (or different) experiences?

Rock

Posted by Rock At 10:36:29 AM On 05/30/2006 | - Website - |

21 - A customer of mine hates RR too, and I write the following little 'auto-RR-remover':
The agent is of type 'Before new mail arrives'.

@If(ReturnReceipt="1";FIELD _ViewIcon:=103;""); @If(ReturnReceipt="1";FIELD ReturnReceipt:=@DeleteField;"");

You can put in another icon of course.
This way he could still see who send him an RR, but it was removed upfront automatically.
No change to views/folders needed.

Posted by Theo Heselmans At 04:43:32 AM On 05/29/2006 | - Website - |

22 - Sorry, but I need more help. How can I edit my inbox from template. I have Design in my computer?

Posted by Rodrigo At 03:54:24 PM On 06/21/2006 | - Website - |

23 - You can Return Receipt send and choose ok, or not send, choose no!

Please insert follow. Code in Query Open

Im Designer --> Forms --> Memo --> in "Queryopen"
eingeben und fertig!

Sub Queryopen(Source As Notesuidocument, Mode As Integer, Isnewdoc As Variant, Continue As Variant)
Dim note As notesdocument
If Not isnewdoc Then
Set note=source.document
If note.hasitem("ReturnReceipt") Then
If Not note.getitemvalue("ReturnReceipt")(0)="0" Then
If Not (Messagebox ("Wollen Sie die EmpfangsbestÃ¤tigung wirklich schicken?" , 4+256, "MAIL")=6) Then
Call note.removeitem("ReturnReceipt")
Call note.save(True,True, True)
End If
End If
End If
End If
Set cMemoObject = New UIMemoDocument
Call cMemoObject.Init(Source,Isnewdoc)
End Sub

GruÃ
Kemal (Allias Handsome)

Posted by Kemal At 08:08:00 AM On 08/20/2006 | - Website - |

24 - I first made that change back in R4.5, amusingly I also used the bomb icon.

One side effect is that users lose trust in a system which "no longer works" if they don't get receipts as they expect.

To combat this I have a second action that re-adds the return receipt. So I remove the receipt, open it, read and then, when the moment is right re-add the receipt. They get the receipt and call you up "you got my email then?"

Posted by Ben Rose At 12:52:04 PM On 05/25/2006 | - Website - |

25 - I am totally new to using lotus notes...hence don't know how to get to domino designer pane...

I use Lotus notes 6.5
Cd somebody put me on to a step by step guide on doing the same, if available on the internet.
Else could somebody help me define an agent (step by step) to remove return receipts. I have figured out how to reach the agents thingie..wd be obliged.
:)

Posted by Ajay Grover At 08:55:44 AM On 11/26/2006 | - Website - |

26 - I agree with you, I hate return receipts. I have replaced the design of my mailfile with the template from OpenNTF which has this functionality as well, which is one of the main reasons I use it. This is a great tip to know if I decide to go back.

Posted by Mike At 12:47:29 PM On 05/25/2006 | - Website - |

27 - I am not a technical person at all, but am being investigated at work for reading someone's email (even though I was delegated as an "ACL" to do so). I was in this person's calendar, but not their email. A third party received a return receipt from me, although the email was not adressed to me. In the little bit of research I've done, I've found that the mail and calendar files are the same files. My question is, is there a way that a return receipt may have been sent just from me being in a person's calendar, from me replicating while being in their calendar, or any other way? Please let me know (in the your least technical voice) any ideas you may have about this. Thanks.

Posted by Lisa Jeanette At 04:26:57 PM On 07/25/2006 | - Website - |

28 - Open your mail, select Create > Agent, give it a name, select Shared, and the trigger is On Event. The event is "Before new mail arrives". Now you want to create a Simple Action for this agent. Your action is Modify Field, Modify By "Replace", Field "ReturnReceipt", value "0". This will set EVERY message to ReturnReceipt=0. No icons, no notification, it just stops RR, period. Very clean, Very neat. If you need to test mail routing or anything like that, just click reply.

Posted by DominoAdmin At 03:44:32 PM On 07/21/2006 | - Website - |

29 - Wolgang Flamme has posted a great article on his site on how to handle RRs ( http://www.sns1.de/partner/flamme/wflamme.nsf/Shortcut/ReturnReceipt1 )

It is written in german, but you guys are able to read the code ...

Posted by Ulrich Krause At 01:15:23 PM On 05/25/2006 | - Website - |

30 - Rocky,
I don't fully understand your side note:

"If you attempt to change the Inbox folder directly in your mail file it will "break" the automatic delivery of mail into your inbox."

While I've seen delivery of mail into the inbox folder been broken a LOT of times (sigh), nothing seems to happen when I alter the design of it directly in my mailfile. What do you mean exactly?

Posted by Oliver Regelmann At 09:37:31 AM On 05/30/2006 | - Website - |