PMDF System Manager's Guide

PMDF-MR will convert Message Router read receipt requests into Internet read receipt requests (using the Disposition-notification-to: header) and vice-versa. Note that Message Router read receipt requests have design limitations that mean that they can not work in many cases, especially with MailWorks; this is not a PMDF-MR limitation, but rather an inherent aspect of Message Router read receipt design that can impact sites that use only Message Router and do not use PMDF-MR at all.

The reportheader, reportnotary, reportboth, and reportsuppress channel keywords control PMDF-MR's handling of delivery receipt requests. The current default is reportheader, meaning that PMDF-MR will convert between Message Router delivery receipt requests and ad-hoc header delivery receipt requests. The use of the recommended reportnotary keyword causes PMDF-MR to convert between Message Router delivery receipt requests and standard Internet NOTARY delivery receipt requests.

PMDF-MR transfers actual notification messages between Message Router and the Internet as normal messages. Note, however, that the rules for originator information in Message Router messages differ from the rules for Internet messages, and notification messages in particular can require some modification of originator information in order to be legal and acceptable to, respectively, Message Router or the Internet. Internet notification and bounce messages are required to have an empty envelope From: address and all Internet messages are required to have a non-empty header From: address; in contrast, Message Router does not permit any messages to omit an envelope From: address and Message Router's notification messages tend to omit a header From: address. So when sending into Message Router, PMDF-MR constructs an envelope From: address if there is no real From: value (normally using the configured postmaster address), so that Message Router will accept the message; when PMDF-MR does so, it inserts a warning. And in the other direction, when picking messages up from Message Router, PMDF-MR will construct a From: header if one is not already present (normally using the configured postmaster address), inserting a From-warning: header if it had to construct a From: header.