Scenario:
- User sends a number of e-mails. All are delivered without any problems.
- User creates first calendar event (and sends invitation). It is delivered at once.
- Five minutes later user creates another calendar event. Invitation is not delivered at all.
- User, again, sends a number of e-mails. All, again, are delivered without problems.
- Program does not inform user about errors in delivering that calendar event's invitation for five hours since event creation, i.e. until program closure.
- Calendar marks that invitation was delivered even though it still sits in "Outbok" folder.
And the cherry on the top: After learning about above problem, user sends an e-mail to its IT Support that it can't send one, single calendar event's invitation. E-mail is delivered without any problems.
Question. Is this possible? Answer: Microsoft Outlook 2013.
An error message displayed at 16:42, i.e. 4 hours and 53 minutes after first attempt of sending message:
Between start of my work I have sent a dozen of e-mails. All delivered without a problems. Then, I have created a calendar event at 11:45. Its invitation was sent as well. Within next five minutes I have created another calendar event. Invitation was never sent so far. Later that day, I have successfully sent another dozen or so of e-mail all delivered.
I was able to understand that we have some problem only because I was noticed (upon Outlook closure) that it is still trying to send something (for past five hours without any error message!). And I was warned that closing the program will interrupt the process:
And now, the best part. Since invitation for that particular calendar event was not delivered at all I had to reschedule it to another day. But, first part was to delete that event's invitation dangling in my "Outbox" folder for hours.
And here I hit the wall for the first time:
OK... then maybe opening of that message will help in anything?
Aaaaarrrrgh!
Of course, restarting Outlook brought no change. It even made things worse (longer), because it eventually turned out that it is impossible to delete a message from Outlook's outbox during delivery attempt. I had to wait until another send process finally failed and only then I could delete this message.
I had to cancel my meeting (due not not sending invitation for it) and I had to spend another hour at office to clarify everything.
People, who design IT shit like that should be hanged!