It’s an example of Microsoft curious but long-standing corporate reluctance to deal with time zone related matters. Now a single Exchange Server can process messages for different organizations in a range of time zones but Microsoft hasn’t added all the necessary features to cope.

It seems Exchange Server relies on the time zone setting of the server with no ability for the organization/tenant to customize that. The consequences of change to multi-tenant use hasn’t been fully handled by Microsoft. under the presumption that each server handled a single organization. This is a change from the way Exchange Server was originally designed and developed for many years i.e. Office 365 runs Exchange Server in what Microsoft calls a ‘multi-tenanted’ environment meaning the one server handles email for many separate organizations. The problem is in the design of Exchange Server. There is false hope given with a time zone change to Outlook Web Apps but that doesn’t fix the email tracking bug. To paying customers it’s a bug and worse, a bug with no fix. Naturally Microsoft staff will tell you there’s no problem. Monrovia is the capital of Liberia on the west coast of Africa (not the one in California).ĭepending on who you ask, this is either a bug or Office 365 acting ‘as expected’.

Reykjavik is a nice place (great soft serve ice-cream) but it’s nowhere near where the sender or recipient are located. Was read on Monday, Febru9:07:50 PM (UTC) Monrovia, Reykjavik.īoth places have the same time zone settings and are top of the time zone list in Windows, which is why it shows up as the default. Sent: Monday, Febru9:08:27 PM (UTC) Monrovia, Reykjavik When an Office 365 user asks for a read receipt, the receipt comes back with a time zone of ‘UTC Monrovia / Reykjavik’ not the readers local time nor the Office 365 users time nor even something like the time zone for the Office 365 servers location.įor example here’s an Office 365 users read receipt from a recipient in Australia: Your message Make sure you check the following options: Then run the following command to check the setting about 'Mark as read': Get-MailboxMessageConfiguration -Identity FL Identity,Read. We can try to create a new test mailbox and check if the issue persists. There’s an ongoing complaint about Office 365’s response to email read receipts and other email tracking. Please confirm if the issue only occurs on one specific user or not. Office 365 mis-handles email read receipts and tracking with the Monrovia / Reykjavik time zone.

Office 365 outlook read receipt