An email didn't become a job

Start here: nothing is thrown away

Every message that reaches WorkOrders is recorded, including the ones that don't become jobs. When a message isn't turned into a work order, the reason is saved with it. Nothing is deleted without a record.

So if a customer is asking "We emailed you, where's the job?", there's a specific answer. If nothing on this page explains what happened, send us the date, the rough time and the address it was sent from. We can look up that exact message and tell you what happened to it.

How long should it take?

• Your own WorkOrders address, yourfirm@jobs.workorders.nz, is immediate. Mail comes straight to us, so the job appears within seconds of the email arriving.
• A mailbox you've connected is checked every five minutes, so a wait of up to five minutes is normal. If someone is waiting on you for an answer, that's the number to give them.

If you've just connected a mailbox with a full inbox, WorkOrders works through it in batches, so a large backlog takes a while to come through. It hasn't stalled.

What never becomes a job

Some mail is sent automatically by one computer to another. If it became jobs, someone would spend all day closing jobs that were never requests. WorkOrders recognises these before a job is created, and records each one with its reason.

• Bounces and delivery failures. This is the "your message could not be delivered" notice that comes back from a mail server. If a bounce from one of our own status emails became a job, it would send another email, which could bounce again.
• Out-of-office and other automatic replies. "I'm on leave until the 14th" isn't a request for work. Mail programs mark these replies as automatic, and WorkOrders trusts that. It also recognises the markers Outlook and Microsoft 365 use, which are the only sign an Exchange out-of-office reply gives.
• Mailing lists and bulk mail. Newsletters, supplier updates, and anything sent to a list instead of to you. If a message looks like it went out to a mailing list, or the sender has marked it as bulk mail, it isn't treated as a request.
• Mail from a no-reply@ sender. Nobody reads replies to those addresses, so you couldn't talk to the sender about a job even if it were a request.
• WorkOrders' own emails coming back in. A status email we sent can end up in a mailbox you've connected, which happens more easily than you'd think. WorkOrders recognises it as one of its own instead of reading it as a new request.
• Mail that has been passed between mail servers more than twenty-five times. That's a message going round in a loop between two forwarding rules. A real customer email passes through well under ten.

If the message you're looking for is one of these but you think it really was a request, please tell us. A real example is how we find out if one of these rules is wrong.

Junk mail

Mail sent to your WorkOrders address is checked for junk before it reaches us. Anything that scores badly enough is stored but not turned into a job.

The junk filter is set to be lenient. A customer describing a burst pipe in capital letters with three photos attached looks a lot like junk to a spam filter, and missing a job costs you far more than closing a junk one. If a real request has been caught, let us know.

Two of everything?

You shouldn't get two. If the same message arrives at your WorkOrders address and through a connected mailbox, it only makes one job. Every email has an ID that the sender's email program gave it, and WorkOrders keeps track of the ones it has seen for your company. The second copy is recognised and recorded as a duplicate.

That's why forwarding is safe. You can forward your existing inbox to your WorkOrders address and connect that same inbox, for a changeover or for good, without anyone having to close duplicate jobs.

Two different emails about the same problem do make two jobs. They're two separate messages, and WorkOrders can't safely tell whether the second one is about the same job or a new fault. But a reply to one of our status emails is added to the job it's about and doesn't start a new one.

A connected mailbox that has stopped

Connections do stop eventually. Someone deletes a password while tidying up, two-step verification gets switched off, or the account is rebuilt. When that happens, you don't have to spot it yourself.

• The mailbox is marked as needing attention on Settings → Mailboxes, with the error from the mail server shown next to it, so you can see what went wrong.
• Every owner and administrator in the firm gets an email about it.
• Nothing is lost. The messages stay in the mailbox, and WorkOrders reads them on the first check after you reconnect. You won't have to enter any of them by hand.

To reconnect, create a new password for the mailbox and paste it in. See connecting a Gmail mailbox for the steps, which are much the same whoever your provider is.

The usual questions

Still stuck? Get in touch with the date, the time and the address the message was sent from, and we'll find it. And if you're still deciding how requests should reach you, how work gets into WorkOrders compares the four options.