CRM 2011 On Premise – Issue with Workflow Generated Email – This message has not yet been submitted for delivery

I have recently come across an issue with Emails generated through workflows are not getting delivered with a message “This message has not yet been submitted for delivery”. In my case if I create an Email activity directly in my web client it gets delivered. If you Google it there are lots of reasons this issue could have happen and I have went through lots of post, and tried different options and then I have spend considerable time to profile the issue and finally… I found it. This particular issue I found wasn’t anywhere, so I thought of putting it here and it might help some one.

The environment I am having CRM 2011 On Premise with a single server, with UR12, and using Email Router configured with SMTP for outgoing emails.

I have a custom workflow and one of the step that creates an Email, and when this workflow fires the Email gets created, with status of “Pending Send”, then assuming that Email Router will process those Emails. However the Email Router wasn’t picking up these Emails and later when I open up the Email, I can see the message “This message has not yet been submitted for delivery. For more information, see help.”, and nothing in the Windows Log either.

The issue was when the workflow step creates an Email type Activity; the platform inserts a Null value into deliveryattempts attribute of Email entity record if you don’t specify any value in the “No. of Delivery Attempts” attribute in the Email Template UI. The Email Router always looks for deliveryattempts value is 0 or greater, and the Null value is being ignored.  I have updated the “No. of Delivery Attempts” attribute  of Email Template with 0 in my workflow step and activated, and it worked!!!!

Note that when we create the Email Activity manually, the platform insert 0 value into deliveryattempts attribute, and this is how I figure it out this issue.

With so many other reasons, one more reason for “This message has not yet been submitted for delivery” was not specifying a value in “No. of Delivery Attempts” attribute of the Email Template.

Hope that this will help someone.

Thanks

Thomas