Types of Events

• Table of Contents
• Bounce Events
  • bounce_all (Previously Called hook_stat) Event
  • bounce_bad_address (Previously Called hook_bounce) Event
  • Bounce Text Format
• Spam Complaint Events
  • scomp (Previously Called hook_scomp) Event
• Click and Open Tracking Events (for GreenArrow Engine’s SimpleMH System)
  • engine_click Event
  • engine_open Event
• Unsubscribe Events (for GreenArrow Engine’s SimpleMH System)
  • engine_unsub (Previously Called hook_unsub) Event
• Delivery Events
  • delivery_attempt Event

There are multiple kinds of events in the GreenArrow system that you can access or be notified of. This document gives an overview of each kind of event and how they relate.

Bounce Events

A bounce event is when a bounce message is received and processed by the GreenArrow Engine bounce processor.

This relates to delivery attempt events as follows:

• If you see a delivery attempt event with a status of failure or failure_toolong (as long as the Return-Path of the message is set correctly), you will then also see a bounce event for that message.
• If you see a delivery attempt event with a status of accepted, this message may still bounce. This bounce can happen when a remote SMTP server accepts the message, then later fails at delivering it, and returns a bounce message to GreenArrow. This is called an asynchronous bounce.

A bounce event has different information on the failure than the delivery event, such as the code of the bounce processor.

There are two kinds of bounce events:

bounce_all (Previously Called hook_stat) Event

This event is triggered for every bounce message processed by the bounce processor. This includes bounces where the address has not yet met the qualifying criteria for deactivation. bounce_all events do not require any action and should not be a reason to remove addresses from your database or stop sending to addresses. Use the bounce_bad_address event for subscriber deactivation instead.

This event type exists for applications that want to keep statistical information on how many bounces are received for each campaign or information on what recipients didn’t receive the email and why.

If you do not plan to use this event type, it can be turned off to reduce the overhead of processing these events.

Field	Description	Example Value
event_type	The type of event (bounce_all).	bounce_all
event_time	The time that the bounce happened, in seconds past the Unix epoch.	1317305252
server_id	Server ID as configured by server_id.	example
event_unique_id	A unique identifier for this event.	64 character string
email	The email address that this message was to.	[email protected]
listid	The lowercased identifier for the mailing list that this message is a part of.	t99
sendid	The lowercased internal identifier for the send.	t9920110705
bounce_type	The type of bounce. h for hard, s for soft, and o for other.	h
bounce_code	The code of the type of bounce.	10
bounce_text	The text of the failure message. (Up to the number of characters configured.)	1.1.1.1 failed after I sent the message. Remote host said: 554 delivery error: dd This user doesn't have a yahoo.com account ([email protected]) - mta1218.mail.mud.yahoo.com
click_tracking_id	The click tracking ID is specified using the X-GreenArrow-Click-Tracking-ID header and can be used to trace an event back to a specific message.	1927393
synchronous	Indicates whether this was a synchronous bounce (true) or asynchronous bounce (false).	true

bounce_bad_address (Previously Called hook_bounce) Event

This event is triggered when the bounce processing system detects that an email address has met the configured removal threshold for either hard or soft bounces. (This often requires more than one soft bounce, as we don’t want to remove addresses after a single soft bounce.)

This event occurs so you can remove the address from your database or stop sending to this address. (Continuing to send to a bad address may have a negative impact on your deliverability.)

Field	Description	Example Value
event_type	The type of event (bounce_bad_address).	bounce_bad_address
event_time	The time that the bounce happened, in seconds past the Unix epoch.	1317305252
server_id	Server ID as configured by server_id.	example
event_unique_id	A unique identifier for this event.	64 character string
email	The email address that this message was to.	[email protected]
listid	The lowercased identifier for the mailing list that this message is a part of.	t99
sendid	For the most recent bounce in the run: The lowercased internal identifier for the send.	t9920110705
bounce_type	For the most recent bounce: h for a hard bounce and s is for a soft bounce.	h
bounce_code	For the most recent bounce in the run: The code of the bounce rule that this bounce matched.	10
bounce_text	For the most recent bounce in the run: The text of the failure message. (Up to the number of characters configured.)	1.1.1.1 failed after I sent the message. Remote host said: 554 delivery error: dd This user doesn't have a yahoo.com account ([email protected]) - mta1218.mail.mud.yahoo.com
click_tracking_id	The click tracking ID is specified using the X-GreenArrow-Click-Tracking-ID header and can be used to trace an event back to a specific message.	1927393

Bounce Text Format

The bounce_text field in bounce_all and bounce_bad_address events is calculated as follows:

1. For synchronous bounces (bounces that occurred as a result of the SMTP delivery conversation), the bounce_text format is the same as the Queue Logfile Format except without the conversion and replacement of ASCII bytes outside of the 33-126 range.
2. For asynchronous bounces (bounces that were emailed back into GreenArrow), this is the raw body of the bounce email which GreenArrow received, without multipart decoding or quoted-printable decoding.

Then:

• Bytes/octents that are not part of valid UTF-8 characters get turned into U+FFFD.
• The length is truncated to 1024 bytes.
  • This can be overridden by the store_bounce_details_length field in the Bounce Processor Configuration.

Spam Complaint Events

When someone clicks on a “this is spam” link at an ISP that supports feedback loops, and a feedback loop notification is sent to GreenArrow, a spam complaint event is created.

This event occurs so that you can remove the address that generated the complaint from your database or stop sending to it. You can also use this event to maintain statistical information on the number of spam complaints created by each campaign. Continuing to send to an address that has complained about spam can have a negative effect on your deliverability.

scomp (Previously Called hook_scomp) Event

Field	Description	Example Value
event_type	The type of event (scomp).	scomp
event_time	The time that the bounce happened, in seconds past the Unix epoch.	1317305252
server_id	Server ID as configured by server_id.	example
event_unique_id	A unique identifier for this event.	64 character string
email	The email address that this message was to.	[email protected]
listid	The identifier for the mailing list that this message is a part of.	t99
sendid	For the most recent bounce in the run: The internal identifier for the send.	t9920110705
click_tracking_id	The click tracking ID is specified using the X-GreenArrow-Click-Tracking-ID header and can be used to trace an event back to a specific message.	1927393

Click and Open Tracking Events (for GreenArrow Engine’s SimpleMH System)

If you are using SimpleMH’s click and open tracking, then a click or open event will be created whenever someone loads images in an email message or clicks on a link in it.

engine_click Event

Field	Description	Example Value
event_type	The type of event (engine_click).	engine_click
event_time	The time that the bounce happened, in seconds past the Unix epoch.	1317305252
server_id	Server ID as configured by server_id.	example
event_unique_id	A unique identifier for this event.	64 character string
email	The email address that this message was to.	[email protected]
listid	The identifier for the mailing list that this message is a part of.	t99
sendid	For the most recent bounce in the run: The internal identifier for the send.	t9920110705
click_url	The URL of the link that was clicked on.	http://www.example.com
click_tracking_id	The click tracking ID is specified using the X-GreenArrow-Click-Tracking-ID header and can be used to trace an event back to a specific message.	1927393
engine_ip	The IP address that generated the click	1.2.3.4
user_agent	The user agent that generated the click.	Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_3) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/44.0.2403.89 Safari/537.36

engine_open Event

Field	Description	Example Value
event_type	The type of event (engine_open).	engine_open
event_time	The time that the bounce happened, in seconds past the Unix epoch.	1317305252
server_id	Server ID as configured by server_id.	example
event_unique_id	A unique identifier for this event.	64 character string
email	The email address that this message was to.	[email protected]
listid	The identifier for the mailing list that this message is a part of.	t99
sendid	For the most recent bounce in the run: The internal identifier for the send.	t9920110705
click_tracking_id	The click tracking ID is specified using the X-GreenArrow-Click-Tracking-ID header and can be used to trace an event back to a specific message.	1927393
engine_ip	The IP address that generated the open	1.2.3.4
user_agent	The user agent that generated the open.	Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.10; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.1.0 Lightning/4.0.1
is_privacy_open	GreenArrow has determined that this open represents a Mail Privacy Protection open.	true

Unsubscribe Events (for GreenArrow Engine’s SimpleMH System)

If you use SimpleMH, GreenArrow Engine can process unsubscribe links via two mechanisms:

1. When you insert a SimpleMH unsubscribe link, SimpleMH processes it.
2. When you do not include a List-Unsubscribe header, SimpleMH automatically inserts one for you and processes it.

When someone unsubscribes using either of the above mechanisms, an engine_unsub event will be created.

engine_unsub (Previously Called hook_unsub) Event

Field	Description	Example Value
event_type	The type of event (engine_unsub).	engine_unsub
event_time	The time that the bounce happened, in seconds past the Unix epoch.	1317305252
server_id	Server ID as configured by server_id.	example
event_unique_id	A unique identifier for this event.	64 character string
email	The email address that this message was to.	[email protected]
listid	The identifier for the mailing list that this message is a part of.	t99
sendid	For the most recent bounce in the run: The internal identifier for the send.	t9920110705
click_url	The URL of the destination unsubscribe link. For unsubscribes that occur as a result of the List-Unsubscribe header, this value will be blank.	http://www.example.com/unsub.php
click_tracking_id	The click tracking ID is specified using the X-GreenArrow-Click-Tracking-ID header and can be used to trace an event back to a specific message.	1927393

Continuing to send to an address that has unsubscribed can negatively impact your deliverability.

Delivery Events

A delivery event represents the attempted delivery of a message through SMTP or to a local mailbox. In the case of an SMTP delivery, this shows whether the remote SMTP server accepted or rejected the message or if the delivery attempt was throttled.

When a message delivery fails bounce_all and bounce_bad_address event(s) can also be created.

Delivery events can be logged using the delivery_attempt event type described below. Alternatively, delivery events can be viewed with the hvmail_report command or logged to a file.

delivery_attempt Event

Field	Description	Example Value
event_type	The type of event (delivery_attempt).	delivery_attempt
event_time	The time that the bounce happened, in seconds past the Unix epoch.	1317305252
server_id	Server ID as configured by server_id.	example
event_unique_id	A unique identifier for this event.	64 character string
email	The email address that this message was to.	[email protected]
listid	The identifier for the mailing list that this message is a part of.	t99
sendid	The internal identifier for the send.	t9920110705
click_tracking_id	The click tracking ID is specified using the X-GreenArrow-Click-Tracking-ID header and can be used to trace an event back to a specific message.	1927393
timestamp	The time that the bounce happened, in seconds past the Unix epoch.	1317305252.08338
channel	local if the delivery attempt is to a local mailbox or remote if the delivery attempt is to a remote mail server.	remote
status	Result of this delivery attempt. Can be success, failure, failure_toolong, deferral or connmaxout.	success
is_retry	0 if this is the first delivery attempt and 1 otherwise.	0
msguid	Internal unique ID of the message. IDs are not repeated unless the system clock goes backward. This is not the same as the Message-ID.	1490817966.30790899
sender	The Return-Path of the message. This is also called the envelope sender, MFROM address or bounce address.	[email protected]
mtaid	Primary key of the VirtualMTA that the message is assigned to.	2
injected_time	The time that the message was injected into GreenArrow’s queue, in seconds past the Unix epoch.	1490817966
message	The success, failure, or deferral message for this delivery attempt. This message will be in the Queue Logfile Format with non-UTF8 characters removed.	207.99.125.72 accepted message./Remote host said: 250 ok 1490817966 qp 13613/
outmtaid	Primary key of the VirtualMTA that the delivery attempt took place with. This can be, but isn’t always the same as the mtaid. For example, if mtaid is a Routing Rule, then outmtaid will be the VirtualMTA within that Routing Rule that was actually used for the delivery attempt.	2
outmtaid_ip	The outgoing IP address used for this delivery attempt (see note below).	127.0.0.1
outmtaid_hostname	The hostname used for this delivery attempt’s SMTP conversation (see note below).	example.com
sendsliceid	Internal use Studio feature that’s not yet documented.	298602
throttleid	Blank if the delivery attempt took place using an SMTP Relay Server or the default Throttling Rule. Otherwise, it contains the ID of the Throttling Rule that was used when making the delivery attempt.	35
mx_hostname	The hostname to which this delivery attempt occurred (whether or not it came from an actual MX record).	alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com
mx_ip	The IP address to which this delivery attempt occurred (whether or not it came from an actual MX record).	209.85.203.26
from_address	The first email address in the From header as it was originally injected into GreenArrow.	[email protected]
headers	A JSON object containing the values of the headers as configured in the log_header configuration directive. Folded headers will simply contain the folding newlines/whitespace. As a header may be included in an email multiple times, the value of the JSON object is an array of strings.	{"Subject":["=?UTF-8?Q?Let=E2=80=99s_ask_the_experts:_What_?=\n =?UTF-8?Q?will_email_look_like_next_year=3F?="]}
message_size	The size of the message (in bytes), if loaded from storage.
smtp_timing	CSV list of SMTP timings of the delivery attempt. See the log_smtp_timings configuration directive for more information.
bounce_code	This is the bounce code for this delivery attempt. Blank when status is success or connmaxout.	10

A more detailed description of the timestamp through throttleid fields in the above list can be found in the Delivery Event Processed Logfile Format documentation. Note that that document’s clicktrackingid and this document’s click_tracking_id are equivalent.

Regarding outmtaid_ip and outmtaid_hostname: These values may be blank if the IP address or relay server used for the attempt was deleted before the event was written to GreenArrow’s internal database. The delivery_attempt event is typically written to that database within 10 seconds of the delivery attempt.