How to use Salesforce’s Email Log functionality to monitor emails to and from Salesforce

As a Salesforce Admin, ensuring that emails sent from Salesforce reach their intended recipients is critical for smooth communication and operations. Sometimes, Users or customers report not receiving emails, and understanding why this happens requires investigation. Salesforce’s detailed Email Logs are a good starting point.

In this blog, we will walk you through how Salesforce Admins can use Salesforce Email Logs to investigate whether emails have been successfully delivered and explore alternative approaches to keeping Users informed about Record updates.

What are the benefits of automating emails?

Organisations like sending automated emails from Salesforce to Users or customers to update them on changes for several key reasons.

Efficiency and Time Savings

• Example: an admin can create automation to notify a User when a Record is updated

Consistency and Accuracy with Personalisation

• Automated emails ensure that updates are consistently sent out in a standardised format, to the correct User and can be personalised with the use of merge fields.
• Example: An automated email to notify a Case Team of changes to a Case’s Status

Real-Time Notifications

• Automated emails can be triggered in real time, ensuring that recipients are always up-to-date on changes as soon as they happen.
• Example: notify relevant Users within minutes if there’s a change in the Stage of an Opportunity, ensuring no one misses important updates.

What is an Email Log in Salesforce?

A Salesforce ‘Email Log’ is a log of every email sent through the Salesforce platform in the last 30 days, presented in a CSV file. For each email sent, information is captured, including the sender, recipient, date and time, delivery status, and any associated error codes.

• Email logs include emails sent through Email Actions, List Email, and Mass Email, as long as the emails are sent through Salesforce. Logs include inbound emails, as well as outbound emails.
• Emails sent through external systems such as Gmail or Office 365 aren’t shown in Email Logs.

Considerations before Requesting an Email Log

Before requesting an email log in Salesforce, there are several important considerations to take into account to ensure you get the most accurate and useful data for troubleshooting or monitoring email activity.

Here are the key factors to keep in mind:

1. Date Range and Time Frame

• Considerations: Salesforce allows you to request email logs for a specific date range (up to 30 days). It’s important to select the correct date range when requesting logs to ensure you capture the relevant emails for investigation. An email log can only span 7 days, if you need to review email log data for a period of time longer than 7 days you will need to submit multiple requests.
• Tip: If you’re investigating an issue that occurred recently, double-check the date and time to ensure your request covers the right period.

2. Email Address(es) to Monitor

• Considerations: If you’re investigating issues for specific recipients or email addresses, you may want to specify those addresses in your request. This can help narrow down the log results to only the relevant emails.
• Tip: Avoid requesting logs for a large number of email addresses unless absolutely necessary, as this can result in very large datasets that may be more difficult to analyse.

3. Email Volume

• Considerations: Consider the volume of emails being sent in your Salesforce instance. If you’re requesting logs for a high-traffic period, such as after an email campaign or system update, the logs can become quite large.
• Tip: If you only need logs for a specific event or issue, try to narrow down your request by filtering for specific recipients or narrowing the time window to minimize the size of the log file.

4. Purpose of the Request

• Considerations: Be clear on why you need the email logs. Are you troubleshooting delivery issues, verifying a campaign, or checking for potential errors? Knowing the purpose will guide how you analyse the log and which details to focus on (e.g., bounce codes, delivery status).
• Tip: If troubleshooting delivery issues, focus on specific error codes and messages that might indicate why emails weren’t delivered successfully.

5. Availability of Logs

• Considerations: Logs are only available for a limited time (up to 30 days), so ensure you’re requesting logs within that window. If you need historical data, you will not be able to retrieve it if it’s beyond the 30-day retention period.
• Tip: If you’re routinely troubleshooting or auditing email activities, consider setting up an ongoing process to regularly download and store email logs, especially if you anticipate needing them for future investigations.

6. Security and Privacy

• Considerations: Email logs contain sensitive information such as email addresses, subject lines, bounce reasons, and potential internal data. Ensure that only authorized personnel have access to the logs and that any sensitive information is handled securely.
• Tip: Avoid sharing email logs with unauthorised personnel, and follow your organisation’s data privacy and security policies when handling these logs.

How do you request an Email Log?

Step 1: Access ‘Email Log Files’ through the Set Up Menu

• Click ‘Email Log Files’ and you will be directed to a screen that displays both ‘Pending and Completed’ Email Logs and allows you to request a new Email log.

• Pending Email Log Requests are email logs that have been requested. There is a maximum of 3 email logs requests permitted at any given time and email logs are queued in the order that they are received.

• Email Logs are Email Log Requests that have been completed.

Step 2: Request an Email Log

• • Set the Start Date/Time and End Date/Time – remembering to be as specific as possible
  • Add any emails that are addressed ‘to’ or ‘from’
• Select a Mail Event (Indicates the final email event in the mail server. Events can be one of the following values:)
• Reception (email was successfully received by the Salesforce Server)
  • Delivery (email was successfully sent from the Salesforce Server)
  • Transient Failure (the email transmission was delayed)
  • Permanent Failure (the email could not be delivered)
• If no Mail Event is selected, all Mail Events are included in the Email Log
• Select an Email Direction
• Select an email address to receive the Email Log

Step 3: Key Field Values and Formats to Understand in an Email Log

Verify the ownership of email sending domains by DKIM key

If your org has a DKIM key set up to prove the ownership of the domain, you can bypass the need to check if a User’s email has been verified by checking “Verify the ownership of email sending domains by DKIM keys” which can be found in the “Deliverability” settings.

If this setting is not enabled and a User has not verified their email address, their emails will not be sent from Salesforce.

Alternatives to automated emails for Record updates.

There are several alternatives to automating emails for notifying users about Record changes in Salesforce. While automated emails are one of the most common methods, you can leverage other Salesforce features and tools that provide flexibility and real-time notifications without relying solely on email. Here are some alternatives:

Conclusion

Automated email notifications have many advantages in terms of efficiency and time-saving, accuracy, and standardisation in real time. However, in contrast, clogged inboxes and the risk of emails not being delivered are important considerations when recommending the optimum solution for notifications to internal Users.

Depending on your organisation’s needs and User preferences, tools like Chatter, Custom Alerts, In-App Notifications, Tasks, and Reports/Dashboards/List Views offer different ways to keep users informed in real time without relying on email. By exploring these alternatives, you can improve engagement, reduce inbox clutter, and streamline communication within Salesforce.

If you do decide to automate emails and there is concern that emails have not been received, email logs are an excellent way to troubleshoot any deliverability issues. Email logs are a goldmine of information and they provide detailed insights into the entire lifecycle of an email, from when it’s sent to its final delivery status.