Twilio Blocked Messages Are Treated as Bounces

[dataCollegechurch]

Prerequisites

• [] Put an X between the brackets on this line if you have done all of the following:
  • Did you perform a search at https://github.com/issues?q=is%3Aissue+user%3ASparkDevNetwork+-repo%3ARock to see if your bug or enhancement is already reported? Yes
  • Can you reproduce the problem on a fresh install or the demo site? No, the demo site does not send email
  • Did you include your Rock version number and client culture setting? Yes

A Picture Is worth a Thousand Words

Description

Emails that Twilio/SendGrid considers blocked are converted to inactive in Rock.

This is problematic for two reasons.

1. Blocked emails are not suppressed by Twilio and should not be inactivated in Rock. There are several causes for blocked emails. For example, your mail server IP address may be blocked by an ISP, or the receiving server may flag the message content using a filter. Twilio SendGrid will not suppress future messages to blocked addresses by default. https://docs.sendgrid.com/ui/sending-email/blocks
2. It appears that the Rock developers intend to add special handling for "blocked" emails but have not added it yet. Right now blocked messages due to way the come over in the event webhook payload are triggering the bounce case handling. TwilioSendGrid.ashx.cs see line 252

Here is the event payload for an example of an email that got blocked

Steps to Reproduce

1. Send an email via the communication wizard to a person who has an email address that will be blocked such as [email protected]
2. After Sendgrid has decided it is done trying to send the email see that the email is now inactivated in Rock

Expected behavior:

Minimally the email is not inactivated. Ideally (above and beyond the scope of this issue log): Add an email note but do not inactivate the email. Also provide users with a way to clear/update the email note.

Actual behavior:

The email is inactivated.

Versions

• Rock Version: Rock McKinley 13.5 (1.13.5.1)
• Client Culture Setting: en-US