Recently the Mailive! web site underwent a complete rewrite paving the way for future enhancements. The future is now and there have been several new features added in the last few weeks.

Trigger test alert on request

If you just entered a new alert and want to make sure the recipients and text all appear the way you want now you can trigger a test alert. After a new alert has been saved, or while editing an existing alert, pushing the "Test this alert" button will send both the Up and Down notifications for the alert. The messages will be recorded in the event history and prepend the subject with *TEST* making it clear this was not an actual alert.

Custom timeframes in reports

Instead of only having hardcoded timeframe selections Mailive! now has the ability to generate graphs and event history based on custom start and end days. Fortunately there is no data retention limit, so any data collected for the life of the server is available for reporting!

Viewing raw responses

Starting in May Mailive! began storing all responses to test messages. Viewing the headers from these messages can be a very helpful trouble shooting technique when diagnosing delays.

There are many more changes planned for release in the near future. We are constantly striving to improve the service. If you have any questions or would like to request a feature feel free to email support@knowledgefront.com

Thanks!

For the last year Knowledge Front has provided a free MX Lookup tool to provide an external view of what the Domain Name System is reporting for MX records.

Last week this tool received a nice update. Now, it not only performs the DNS query using Knowledge Front's servers, but finds the authoritative name servers (NS records) for the domain entered and queries those servers for the MX records directly. This can give a better idea of what is being cached vs. what is currently being reported by the authoritative name servers.

Feel free to give it a try and if there are any questions don't hesitate to contact us.

Very often when diagnosing mail problems it is helpful to see exactly what SMTP responses are being generated for every step of the transaction. Frequently the root cause can be found by closely inspecting the responses from the HELO and RCPT TO portions of the SMTP conversation. Now Mailive! can help out.

Recently Mailive! began recording outgoing SMTP sessions for all test messages the system sends. Now they can be viewed through the interface as shown here.

If there is a problem connecting to the mail server being tested there will be no output to capture. If any portion of the SMTP transcript is able to initiate there should be some evidence available to inspect.

Hopefully this will help diagnose some of the more transient and hard to find problems.

A regularly requested feature for Mailive! has been put into place. Now, instead of needing to wait until the next automatic test is initiated by the system, users have the ability to trigger a test message whenever they like.

Simply click the [ trigger test transaction ] while viewing the graph and history for the server and a test will be initiated immediately. This should make it much easier to catch errors in mail queues and follow logs while troubleshooting. It's fun and easy!