Read Receipts

Read receipts are report messages similar to delivery and non-delivery reports. They have message class strings of the form REPORT.X.RN, where X is the message class of the message the receipt corresponds to (usually IPM.Note). Read receipts inform a sender that a recipient has read a message. Read receipts are generated by the recipient’s email client software; no other component of a messaging system can be guaranteed to know when a user opens a message.

Whether a gateway can support read receipts depends on the foreign system’s capabilities. If the foreign system does support read receipts, gateways should do the following:

• For outgoing messages, convert the value stored in the messages’ PR_READ_RECEIPT_REQUESTED property into whatever format the foreign system requires for read receipt requests.
• For incoming read receipts, convert the content of the receipt—whatever form it takes—into a message whose message class is REPORT.IPM.Note.RN and deliver it to the sender of the original message.

For details about what properties are required on read receipts, see the topic About Message Properties in MAPI Programmer’s Guide.