ResponseMaster Returned Message Categories
Overview
ResponseMaster can place a message into any of these categories:
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Hard Bounce
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Mail Block
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Challenge Response
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Feedback Loop
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Message Restriction
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Read Receipt
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Out of Office Reply
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Network Invitation
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Delivery
Status Notification
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Subscribe Request
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Unsubscribe Request
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Redirect
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Soft Bounce
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Mailbox Full
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Virus
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User Reply
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Rule Update
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Custom
1. Hard Bounce
Description |
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A message is considered a hard bounce if it had a fatal addressing error. No
messages will ever be delivered to the email address since it is absolutely
incorrect.
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Examples |
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"The recipient name is not recognized"
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"User not listed in public Name & Address Book"
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Possible Causes |
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The recipient made a typo while entering the address.
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The recipient changed Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
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The recipient changed jobs.
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Recommended Disposition |
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If you have other methods of contacting the recipient, use them to get a valid
address.
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If you do not have other methods of contacting the recipient, unsubscribe them
from the mailing list as soon as possible since you are wasting resources
generating messages that will never reach the recipient.
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2. Mail Block
Description |
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A message is considered a mail block if it was rejected by the recipient (or
recipient's mail server) for security reasons.
Blacklisting is one important type of mail block. If a company does not follow
the "rules" for sending mail to a particular domain (for example, they BCC a
lot of recipients), they may get blacklisted, and all of their messages will be
rejected.
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Examples |
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"Remote host said: 550 Relaying is prohibited"
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"The IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is blacklisted"
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"5.7.1 You are not authorized to send Internet e-mail: sample@g.com"
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"5.7.1 Spammers are NOT welcomed here"
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"Recipient address rejected: Relay access denied"
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Possible Causes |
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The sender's reverse DNS entry or From address is incorrect.
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The MX record for the recipient's domain is incorrect.
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The sender has been blacklisted.
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Recommended Disposition |
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Typically, you should forward mail blocks to a technical person on the
message-generation team to determine why the error is happening. Depending on
the problem, that person can either fix it or contact the recipient's mail
administrator and ask to be unblocked.
In the case of relay errors, the recipient's mail server administrator may need
to update the MX records.
If the problem cannot be solved, unsubscribe the recipient.
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3. Challenge Response
Description |
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ChallengeResponse is a sub-category of MailBlock.
It includes messages that require you to take action to have it delivered, or
to be added to a white-list.
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Examples |
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"Please click the link below to verify you are human"
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"Please reply to this message without changing it to be added to the whitelist"
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Possible Causes |
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The user or server has installed Spam filtering software that
employs this mechanism.
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Recommended Disposition |
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You can either forward them to an operator to respond to
or treat them as HardBounces and unsubscribe the user.
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4. Feedback Loop
Description |
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FeedbackLoop is a sub-category of MailBlock.
A message is considered a feedback loop if it is the result
of a user actively identifying a message as spam.
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Examples |
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"The user has marked your message as spam"
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Possible Causes |
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A user clicked a "this is spam" button on their mail client.
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Recommended Disposition |
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You MUST unsubscribe these users or risk having all
of your mail to this domain blocked.
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5. Message Restriction
Description |
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An email message faces a message restriction if the delivery failed because of
a problem with the message, not with the address. There are three common
reasons for email to be placed in this category: 1) the recipient does not
accept mail with attachments, 2) the message is too long, and 3) the message is
improperly constructed (often the case when the sender has written a
proprietary message-generation engine).
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Examples |
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"The content length of the message is too long for the recipient to take
delivery"
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"Your mail to xxx could not be delivered because xxx is not accepting mail with
attachments or embedded images"
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"Remote host said: 501 5.5.2 there is a stray LF character in the message"
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"Cannot send 8-bit data to 7-bit destination"
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Possible Causes |
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A bug in the mail-generation system
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Incorrect recipient properties
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Recommended Disposition |
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Typically, these should be forwarded to a customer support person so that they
can adjust the recipient's properties (for example, indicate that the recipient
cannot receive attachments). When there is a mail-generation error, the
customer support person needs to forward the message to the vendor of the
message-generation software so that it can be corrected.
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6. Read Receipt
Description |
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A read receipt is a message that is automatically sent by the user's mail
server indicating that the user has read the message or that the message has
been delivered to the user's mailbox. Email gateways (namely, email to fax or
email to pager) frequently send this type of message.
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Examples |
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"The message that you sent was opened by the following: xxx"
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"Your fax message to xxx was successfully delivered"
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"Thanks for using our service, your message has been sent to +7035551212"
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"Thank you for your inquiry. We have received your message. It will be reviewed
and an answer will be sent to you shortly."
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"Recipient: 7035551212(Alpha): Succeeded - Page has been delivered."
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Recommended Disposition |
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Typically, these messages should be discarded.
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7. Out of Office Reply
Description |
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An out of office reply is a message that is automatically sent by the user's
mail server indicating that the user is not currently checking his/her messages
but will eventually return and do so in the future.
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Examples |
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"Jane Doe is currently out of the office and will return on Thursday."
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"I will return to the office on May 5."
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Recommended Disposition |
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Typically, these messages should be discarded.
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8. Network Invitation
Description |
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A message inviting you to join a business or social network (eg Facebook, LinkedIn, ...).
It is typically an indication that your address is in the user's address book, but
that isn't always the case.
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Examples |
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"jdoe has invited you to join his network."
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"John Smith has asked you to be his friend on SomeNetwork."
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Recommended Disposition |
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Typically, these messages should be discarded.
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9. Delivery Status Notification
Description |
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A mail server sends a delivery status notification if it is unable to deliver
the email to a recipient after some time. This is an information message
stating that it has attempted to deliver the message, but it has been
unsuccessful so far and some amount of time has passed since the mail was sent.
The server will continue to attempt to deliver the message to the recipient. If
the recipient's domain uses a relay server to receive the messages, the relay
server often sends this message when the recipient's actual mail server is
down.
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Examples |
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"Delivery to the following recipients has been delayed."
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"Warning: could not send message for past 5 minutes"
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"<sample@d.com>... Deferred: 451 4.3.0 over quota: sample
Warning: message still undelivered after 4 hours
Will keep trying until message is 5 days old"
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Recommended Disposition |
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Typically, these messages should be discarded.
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10. Subscribe Request
Description |
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A message is considered a subscribe request if a user is asking to be added to
the mailing list.
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Examples |
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"Please add me to the widgets mailing list."
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Recommended Disposition |
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If you have a list server that handles subscribe requests, the messages should
be forwarded to it. If not, they should be forwarded to customer service.
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11. Unsubscribe Request
Description |
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A message is considered an unsubscribe request if a user is asking to be
removed or unsubscribed from the mailing list or services.
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Examples |
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"Please stop sending these to me"
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"Unsubscribe" in the subject line of a message.
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Recommended Disposition |
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The user should be removed from the mailing list, either automatically or by
customer service.
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12. Redirect
Description |
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A redirect is a message that indicates that the recipient has a new mail
address. In this situation, the mail server does not deliver the mail but,
instead, supplies a forwarding mail address. Users can use this feature to
inform the sender of a new email address.
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Examples |
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"The addressee has no electronic mailbox; the addressee's account has been
disabled. There is an email forwarding address: sample@d.com. Please send email
for this person to the forwarding address above."
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"The address jane@a.com is not valid.
New address for personal mail:
sample@d.com"
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"There is an email forwarding address:
sample@d.com"
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Recommended Disposition |
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Ideally, redirects would be handled automatically. In practice, extracting the
new and old addresses is very difficult, so the redirects should be forwarded
to customer service for processing.
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13. Soft Bounce
Description |
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A soft bounce is a message that could not be delivered,
but we could not be sure that the address is invalid. Network
errors, DNS errors, and timeouts are some common types of problems
placed in this category. Eventually,
mail delivered to these mail addresses might succeed.
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Examples |
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"No route found to domain NewCompany from server TTT/INDUSTRIAL COMMUNICATION."
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"Host unknown (Name server: InternalNameServer: host not found)"
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Possible Causes |
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Recipient's mail server is down or very busy
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Network, name server, or DNS configuration problems at recipient's mail server
host.
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The error message is imprecise.
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Recommended Disposition |
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These messages should be logged (either to a database or a file), and
periodically, you should compare the number of bounced messages to an address
to the number of generated messages. If all the messages that you sent for a
month (or some other timeframe) bounced, you should unsubscribe the user.
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14. Mailbox Full
Description |
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MailboxFull is a sub-category of SoftBounce.
These are bounce messages indicating that the destination mailbox
is over the quota.
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Examples |
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"User mailbox exceeds allowed size"
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"The user(s) account is temporarily over quota."
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Possible Causes |
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The recipient hasn't cleared out their messages in a long time
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The recipient is on vacation and not reading their messages
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The recipient has abandoned the mailbox and no longer checks it
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Recommended Disposition |
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These messages should be logged (either to a database or a file), and
periodically, you should compare the number of bounced messages to an address
to the number of generated messages. If all the messages that you sent for a
month (or some other timeframe) bounced, you should unsubscribe the user. You
may wish to keep users with full mailboxes subscribed for longer than other
soft bounces since the mailbox is valid.
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15. Virus
Description |
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ResponseMaster has very basic virus detection. Messages that we detect as viruses
are placed in this category.
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Examples |
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Recommended Disposition |
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Typically, these messages should be discarded.
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16. User Reply
Description |
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A user reply is a message from a recipient and any message from a mail server
or recipient that cannot be categorized.
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Examples |
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"I'd like to buy 5 widgets."
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Recommended Disposition |
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User replies should be forwarded to customer service. If they are messages from
the user, they should be answered. If they fit into another category, but they
were not properly categorized, forward them to Extreme Messaging so that we may
update our categorization rules.
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16. Rule Update
Description |
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Extreme Messaging delivers the updates to the categorization rules via email.
This is a message containing the new rules.
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Recommended Disposition |
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We recommend that you choose to automatically apply the rules to the active
configuration and restart. Otherwise, you must frequently reinstall the latest
rules.
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17. Custom
Description |
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You can define your own categories. Please refer to
Advanced Topics for more information.
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Recommended Disposition |
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You may also need to create a custom disposition to handle the custom
categories.
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