We've completed a change to Collaborative Tools that should improve email delivery for the system. Email service providers like Yahoo and Gmail use the DMARC specification to deter the amount of spam delivered to users. In recent weeks, we've seen more emails being flagged as spam or completely rejected.

Historically, we've sent emails from the system with the original sender's email in the "from" field. Therefore, if someone with the address crazy4cats@yahoo.com sent an email using the VMS, we would send it from crazy4cats@yahoo.com. If the email goes to other users with Yahoo accounts, it will likely be rejected because Yahoo can tell that the original email did not come from their servers.

The change we've implemented is to send the emails from an anonymous account <no-reply@ucanr.edu>. We've also added the sender name to the "from" field and sender email in the "reply to" field, so if you received an email from me, it should show as "Dave Krause" or "djkrause@ucanr.edu on behalf of Dave Krause <no-reply@ucanr.edu>" depending on the email client or system you use. The "reply to" field tells your email client to use the original sender's email when clicking reply.

We've tested this methodology with several email providers and clients, and it appears to deliver email without any flagging or rejecting.

If you encounter any oddities with the way email is delivered from the Collaborative Tools, please let me know. We have also made a similar change to the Master Gardener Volunteer Management System.