Turn On Email “Read Status” Tracking For Your Organization In Exchange 2010…

All of us are familiar with turning on “read receipt” and “delivery receipt” while composing an important message to make sure that the message has been delivered & read by the recipients. Though this option was useful to some extend in knowing whether the email was read, recipients could always deny sending “read receipt” to…

All of us are familiar with turning on “read receipt” and “delivery receipt” while composing an important message to make sure that the message has been delivered & read by the recipients.

Outlook read receipt

Though this option was useful to some extend in knowing whether the email was read, recipients could always deny sending “read receipt” to the sender.

With Exchange 2010, you can turn on this feature globally, which means that all emails flowing in your organization can be checked for it’s “read status”. The good thing is that the sender can do it him/herself. Let me explain the feature in action.

By default, the feature is disabled. This is the case in both Exchange 2010 & SP1. To check the current configuration, run Get-OrganizationConfig | fl read*

To turn on the feature, run Set-OrganizationConfig –ReadTrackingEnabled $true

Enable read tracking

Now that the feature is turned on, let me send an email from my account (Rajith) to a test account that I have created (Raj Test). To check the status of the message, right click the message from the Sent Items & click “Open Delivery Report” (in OWA).

Open delivery report

To do the same in Outlook 2010, open the email, go to File –> Open Delivery Report.

Delivery report in Outlook 2010

My delivery report to the test user shows that the email was submitted & delivered, but not read yet.

Read tracking in Exchange 2010

Once the email gets read, the delivery report reflects the same.

Read tracking in Exchange 2010 - read message

This stops the normal excuse we hear when we don’t get a timely response for a sent email – “I haven’t seen your email”…

16 Comments

  1. I am only seeing the delivery reports to people within my own organization too. Any thoughts?

  2. I get delivery status but no read status, does the recipient have to do more than read it?

    Thanks

    1. Rajith Enchiparambil says:

      No, once the recipient reads it, you should see it.
      What do you see once the email has been read?

      1. i am getting only deliver report not read status . it show that you used diffrenet email system

        1. Rajith Jose Enchiparambil says:

          Hi Sunil,

          Are you sending to someone outside your org and trying for a read receipt? It only works within the same org.

          1. yes i am checking for yahoo or gmail means external address.

            1. Rajith Jose Enchiparambil says:

              Hi Sunil,

              You cant check whether someone has read your email if it is being sent outside.

              1. ok sir, internaly its work
                thanks for your extreme support.
                sir i am facing another problem like global address book not update automaticaly or manualy on clients

                  1. This problem is not in all clients.some clients having this problem.as per your given link all settings are ok with my server

            2. HI

              Is there any possibilities to trace the users email content,both inbox and send items…by the admisntrator…Now the message trace show only senders email and subject not email content??Any idea..

  3. thank you for this information,

    It works like a charm for mail between two users.

    But somehow it doesn’t work for us when the mail is sent to multiple user at the same time.

    Any ideas on that?

    1. Rajith Enchiparambil says:

      I am not sure about that Joop. Is it when you send to a distribution group?

  4. Rajith Jose Enchiparambil says:

    No, delivery reports are part of Exchange Control Panel which is built into OWA.

  5. Hello,
    Currently when I select Open Delivery Report In the outlook 2010,I get redirected to the exchangeserver.***.lan/ecp/personalsettings in the internet explorer.
    Is there a way to set up this report to open right in the outlook.

    Thanks
    Thanks

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