Automate 10 Minute Email Sending Delay?

[Durham_Black_Cat]

Hi

 

Any geniuses out there know how I can automate (and enforce) a 10 minute delay on all emails users send?

 

They use a mixture of Office 2016 and 365, any help, even partial much appreciated.

 

We can already manually create a 10 min rule in Office 2016, or a 30 sec Send Delay in O365 but that doesn't meet our brief.

 

And yes I know it's probably a bad idea but we've been asked to implement it!

 

Cheers

[mavhc]

So they can cancel it?

[strawberry]

Even the lock down or CP emails?.

 

I can't see a way of doing it .

[Durham_Black_Cat]

Yes. So if they send an email to the wrong person they have 10 mins to realise and cancel it.

[Durham_Black_Cat]

I know that's the crazy part, I never thought they'd actually implement it but they just did!

[synaesthesia]

Bad idea, especially when they need to send that email that needs to go immediately. You can turn on a mailtip to warn when a message is going outside of your domain, and I would suggest putting in a 10-30 second delay at absolute most. 10 minutes is, sorry to say, moronic.

[Durham_Black_Cat]

Bad idea, especially when they need to send that email that needs to go immediately. You can turn on a mailtip to warn when a message is going outside of your domain, and I would suggest putting in a 10-30 second delay at absolute most. 10 minutes is, sorry to say, moronic.

 

I agree entirely but you all know what school's can be like.... I'll probably spend days trying to get it working only to be told to scrap the whole thing!

 

In the short term however I need a solution....

[mavhc]

https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/microsoft-office/four-ways-to-control-outgoing-email-in-outlook/

[synaesthesia]

Again, to protect your own back, put something in writing to your senior leadership team making it clear that it's a bad idea with some reasons why. The biggest and best reason why stands out loud & proud as possibly being an issue for security/child protection/health & safety.

Say your reception staff doesn't have a panic button, can't make a phone call for various reasons yet still have a computer in front of them in which to tap out a quick HELP ME message to someone.

 

10 minutes down the line, you have an ex-receptionist and a school not on lockdown with a maniac running loose because someone had a bright idea...

[mavhc]

Relying on email not being sent to spam in your life and death situation seems like a bad idea

[jthompson]

The argument I'd make is that a conversation conducted over email that should take only a matter of minutes (message, reply, reply) will now take over twenty thirty minutes. A conversation involving more than two recipients will a reply-all or two thrown in will more than likely descend into an hours-long farce of crossed wires - particularly so if it involves external parties. Edited March 13, 2019 by jthompson

[mavhc]

The argument I'd make is that a conversation conducted over email that should take only a matter of minutes (message, reply, reply) will now take over twenty thirty minutes. A conversation involving more than two recipients will a reply-all or two thrown in will more than likely descend into an hours-long farce of crossed wires - particularly so if it involves external parties.

 

Best to set it to only delay to external people, and allow the user to confirm send

[strawberry]

The argument I'd make is that a conversation conducted over email that should take only a matter of minutes (message, reply, reply) will now take over twenty thirty minutes. A conversation involving more than two recipients will a reply-all or two thrown in will more than likely descend into an hours-long farce of crossed wires - particularly so if it involves external parties.

 

 

Person 1... Who wants a free Laptop

Person 2 ... Yes! (Send...wait 10 mins)

person 3. Yes

Person 1 . Congratulations person 3 it's yours

Person 2 . Yes

Person 2. Yes

Person 2. Yes.

[jthompson]

If you do implement it, I guess you can rest assured that the shortcomings will make themselves pretty obvious pretty much on day one.

[3s-gtech]

What will be the mechanism for cancelling the send within those ten minutes? Frantic phonecall to IT + Powershell? That'll work well out of hours!

[dapaulio]

Can you not still recall emails? I know this feature in the past highlighted the f up more than it hid it and not exactly what you want but it’s worth educating staff about if it’s still available.

 

I assume you have been asked to implement this because someone Cok’d up. With all due respect as others have mentioned you shouldnt modify the integrity of your network for the 1% of users that are not doing their jobs efficiently.

Even if it were possible I wouldn’t do it out of principle for some of the reasons mentioned by fellow edugeeks.

With all due respect I understand your position is between a rock and a hard place, Iv been there too but you will get the blame no matter what. It’s which battle you want to choose... Your fault that the user did not spend 5 extra seconds checking the recipients box or your fault that you implemented a delay that could cost someone their life (I know extreme case)

Educating the staff on the importance of safeguarding and general email etiquette thrown in also eg Include a subject with you email is the way forward. I honestly have to resist blocking my offending users for this abomination, one being the HT.

Edited March 13, 2019 by dapaulio

[mavhc]

Best way to "recall" emails is to encrypt them each with their own cert, and then don't hand out the cert when the viewer requests it.

 

WRT actually cancelling the emails I'd expect them to live in my outbox for 10 mins, so I can just delete them from there

[bknaggs]

One option I thought of was when this came up for me was to give people the ability to approve their own messages in a transport rule.

I didn’t need to implement it so I don’t know how well it would work in practice.

[MatthewL]

Surely its better practice to check who they are sending them to, ensure all staff have had training, anyone sends to wrong person and has had training them take down discipline route if serious, far better to do that than delay email.

[mavhc]

a) have rules that recognise unencrypted personal information and don't let it be emailed externally

b) doesn't matter if you email encrypted personal information to the wrong person, because it's encrypted and they can't read it

[crc-ict]

Who thinks this will last more than 10 minutes before someone on SLT calls and says they have an urgent e-mail that must bypass the 10 minute delay?

 

As others have said, madness. Another example of leadership demanding a technical solution to a non-technical problem!

[Durham_Black_Cat]

Who thinks this will last more than 10 minutes before someone on SLT calls and says they have an urgent e-mail that must bypass the 10 minute delay?

 

As others have said, madness. Another example of leadership demanding a technical solution to a non-technical problem!

 

Exactly....

 

Still need a solution though! lol

[strawberry]

The issue here is that you use 365 via outlook and web, This means the solution has to be in 365 and I can't see how you can do that. If onsite you could script exchange to only send every x amount of minutes, and if only using the client you could script the client to go offline.

 

Suggest you burn a ms ticket on this one to prove it's impossible.

[dapaulio]

Exactly....

 

Still need a solution though! lol

 

there does not seem a straight forward way of doing this.

 

a possible way in outlook client but in no way I endorse this method for this situation, as it is likely to cook up more problems than it does good. I'm just suggesting a technical solution to a non technical problem just for sh*ts and giggles. O365 doesn't seem to support this either, so therefore you are left with the client dealing with it which in itself is not a good idea.

 

Better done if there are no other rules as is easier when exporting and importing rules later

 

Create a rule in outlook Applying the rule to all messages sent

CONDITION - NONE click next and confirm the warning (even outlook thinks its a bad idea LOL)

ACTION - Defer delivery by minutes (### minutes)

EXCEPT - if marked with importance (HIGH)

 

go to manage rules and click options export rules

distribute the rule to all users to then import themselves or go around doing it yourself. you could powershell this possibly.

 

Although there is a technical solution for pretty much every non technical problem, it does not mean it has to be implemented or is even a good idea to implement it.

Even a delay of 1 minute could cause problems if eg a user clicks send and logs off within that one minute. the outlook client will not be running to send it therefore email will not send until the user next logs on to a computer or specifically that computer (if you don't use roaming profiles). I have had this before where the user has clicked send and logged off quicker than the outlook client could handle the email.

 

If you do implement something like this make sure you get it in writing from a senior member including as many problems this will cause and suggest an alternative non technical solution of user training.

[mavhc]

Tell them it will cost £1000/year to implement, ask if they still want it.