eG Monitoring
 

Measures reported by EXPMailRecverTest

The Exchange Mail Receiver test periodically emulates a user on an Exchange mail server receiving an email that is uniquely tagged.

This unique tag is configured against the MAIL TAG parameter of the test, and is displayed as the descriptor of the test. Using the metrics reported by this test, administrators can find quick and accurate answers to the following performance queries related to the mail receiving operation:

  • Did authentication to the email service fail?
  • Was any latency noticed when connecting to the email service?
  • Is the receiver's mailbox accessible? Was it able to receive the emulated email successfully? If not, what could have caused the failure?
  • Is email reception slow? If so, what could be slowing down email reception - is it because of a delay in connecting to the email service? or is it because Exchange server is processing incoming email traffic slowly?

Outputs of the test : One set of results for the MAIL TAG configured.

The measures made by this test are as follows:

Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation
auth_status Indicates whether/not the email service authenticated the emulated email. Number The values reported by this measure and its numeric equivalents are mentioned in the table below:

Measure Value Numeric Value
Success 1
Failure 0

Note:

By default, this measure reports the Measure Values listed in the table above to indicate whether/not the emulated email was successfully authenticated. The graph of this measure however is represented using the numeric equivalents only - 0 or 1.
auth_time Indicates the time taken to connect to the email service. Seconds An unusually high value for this measure is indicative of slowness in connecting to the email service. A poor network link between the eG external agent and the cloud-based service could contribute to connectivity issues.
Rcvd_avail Indicates whether/not the receiver's mailbox is accessible over the network. Percent If the value of this measure is 100%, it implies that:

  • The eG external agent has been able to successfully connect to the email service, and;
  • The eG external agent has been able to successfully check whether/not emails with the configured MAIL TAG have been received by the mailbox, and report the count of such emails;

A value 0 is reported if:

  • If the eG external agent is unable to connect to the email service;
  • If the eG external agent successfully connected to the service, but failed to access the configured mailbox, check for the ‘uniquely tagged’ emails, and/or report the count of such emails.

If this measure reports the value 0, then you can use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to ascertain the reason for why the email service/mailbox is unreachable.

Rcvd_msgs Indicates the number of emulated emails- i.e., emails with the configured MAIL TAG - that were received by the mailbox. Number The value 0 for this measure could be a cause for concern, as it indicates that the mailbox did not receive any emulated emails during the last measurement period. While this could hint at a problem in mail reception, it could also just mean that the Office 365 Mail Sender test (mapped to the Office 365 Mail Sender component) probably did not send any messages to the receiver during the period in question.
Avg_roundtrip_time Indicates the average time taken to connect to the service, access the configured mailbox, and check the mailbox for messages. Secs If the value of this measure is abnormally high, it is a clear indicator of slowness in mail reception. In such a situation, you may want to compare the value of the Time taken to connect measure with that of the Avg time to receive messages measure, to diagnose the source of the slowness - is it owing to a delay in connecting to the email service? or is it because the email service is slow in processing incoming mail traffic?
Max_roundtrip_time Indicates the high watermark of round-trip time. Secs An unusually high value for this measure could be indicative of a sudden/sporadic increase in the latency of the mail receiving activity.
Rcvd_time Indicates the average time taken to receive messages. Secs A low value is desired for this measure. A consistent increase in the value of this measure can denote a problem when the email service is receiving emails.
Last_mail_time Indicates the time that has elapsed since the last mail was received. Secs If the time between two emails is abnormally high, it could indicate a problem in the email service, which is either delaying email reception or causing mailboxes to not receive emails at all.