My Scheduled Email Didn't Get Sent on Time - Reasons why this might happen

With ClickDimensions, you can schedule an Email Send to go out on the date and time you desire:

NOTE: When you set these options, you must "Save" the Email Send record BEFORE pressing "Send".

When using this option to schedule an email, the request to ClickDimensions is not submitted to our system until the date and time specified. This is handled by a CRM workflow that is associated with the Email Send:

Notice the "Postpone until:" time on the workflow. CRM sets this based on the date and time that was in the "Send On" field when the record was saved. This is the time when CRM submitted the request to ClickDimensions for processing:

NOTE: There are usually two workflow instances for each Email Send. This is because the workflow is triggered any time the status of the Email Send changes, once from "Draft" to "Scheduled" and again from "Scheduled" to "Sent". When looking at the workflows, the first one to run will contain the steps, with several green checkmarks, for the scheduled email. The second one will have only two green checkmark, showing that it checked if the Email Send status was Scheduled and, finding that is was not, it then checks to see if it was a split test.

What can go wrong and cause the email to be sent at a different time than desired?

1. The most common reason that an email is sent at a different time than desired is when a user accidentally clicks "Send" prior to saving the change to the "Send On" field. In this case, the email is sent immediately because the scheduling options were not saved. The "Postpone Until" field on the workflow will be blank.

   NOTE: For customers on ClickDimensions version 8.0.0 or later, the Email Send record will automatically save before sending.

2. The second most common reason is that a user has set the "Send Immediately" to "No", saved the Email Send, then set the date and time while the window was still open, and saved and closed the record. In this case, the first "Save" initiated the workflow before the date and time were saved. The "Postpone Until" field on the workflow will also be blank in this scenario.
   
   
3. The third most common reason that a scheduled email can be sent at a different time than desired is when the user changes his/her mind about the date and time, reactivates the Email Send record, enters a new date and time, and then clicks "Send" again. There are now two workflows running against the Email Send record. The email is then sent when the earliest "Postpone until" time is reached on one of the workflows. (Note that you will normally see two workflows having run on Email Sends. Even when they are not scheduled emails, the workflow is momentarily triggered by the status change of the Email Send from Draft to Scheduled, and again from Scheduled to Sent. In the case of an email that was not scheduled, neither of these workflows does anything as the first step in the workflow checks to see if it is a scheduled send or not.)

   NOTE: It is not possible to reactivate an Email Send in ClickDimensions Version 6.4.0 or later.

4. In rare cases, the email may be sent at a later time than scheduled or not at all. The "Postpone until" date and time may be correct, but the CRM server did not actually execute the workflow steps in a timely manner. This can be due to performance issues in CRM or having multiple servers running the CRM Asynchronous Processing Service, which handles workflow execution.