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Some of my participants report not receiving survey invitation emails despite the fact that they have been sent. Why is this happening?

Some of my participants report not receiving survey invitation emails despite the fact that they have been sent. Why is this happening?

Solution

In order to ensure emails sent from within the REDCap platform (e.g., survey invitations, survey reminders, Alerts & Notifications, etc.) are received by recipients, they must be sent FROM an @ucalgary.ca email address.

 

If your study team does not have access to an @ucalgary.ca email address:

  • You can request the creation of an @ucalgary.ca email address through UCIT.

    • Participants will be able to respond to the email address that REDCap emails are sent FROM. For this reason, it is recommended to use a general study @ucalgary.ca email address for this purpose instead of the email address of a specific study team member.

  • You can request the use of CHI’s no-reply REDCap email address (noreply.redcap@ucalgary.ca). Please see Contact Us for our support.

    • This no-reply inbox is not monitored, meaning that neither CHI nor study teams will receive participant responses to emails sent from this address.

 

If you have any questions or require assistance, see Contact Us.

Why did this happen?

In order to ensure emails sent from within the REDCap platform (e.g., survey invitations, survey reminders, Alerts & Notifications, etc.) are received by recipients, they must be sent FROM an @ucalgary.ca email address.

Emails sent from domains other than @ucalgary.ca may not be received by recipients, either in their inbox or spam folder. Whether or not emails sent from within REDCap are received by participants cannot be tracked or traced by either the recipient’s or sender’s email provider, nor within REDCap.

Technical Explanation

The UCalgary REDCap instance will always send emails on behalf of the ucalgary.ca domain (DNS), regardless of the domain associated with the FROM address chosen within the relevant REDCap feature (e.g., survey invitations). This is because REDCap is hosted on the UCalgary domain (i.e., …@ucalgary.ca) and is making use of UCalgary’s SMTP email services. As such, all outgoing emails sent from within REDCap will appear as if they were sent from a @ucalgary.ca email address.

This results in a discrepancy between the FROM address’s domain as set within REDCap by study teams, and the actual FROM domain of @ucalgary.ca applied as a result of this technical configuration. Some recipient email providers will flag such emails as potentially harmful and will sometimes prevent the emails from being received. This can occur without notification to either the recipient, and without an undeliverable message being provided to the sender.