Asynchronous error reporting - MESH Reports - undelivered - mex-To value

Message Exchange for Social Care and Health (MESH)
1

We implemented the MESH API several years and is largely reliable.
Recently, working in the test environment [https://msg.intspineservices.nhs.uk] we’ve been sending messages from our usual mailbox to the usual recipient mailbox. Let’s call the mailboxes mb-us and mb-recipient.

I understand and have seen in practice that if the recipient does not read (and perhaps acknowledge) a message sent to them within 5 days, then MESH (I think deletes the message) and sends us a notification in the form of a MESH Report.

In the test system, the recipient says they aren’t seeing any messages (I wonder if they are looking at the right mailbox) Checking our system, I see many MESH reports informing us mex-statuscode: 14/Undelivered message.

This as expected given the messages are not being read. But what puzzles me is that the MESH report states mex-to: mb-us

Shouldn’t the mex-to value be the recipient mailbox mb-recipient? Is this a bug?

Thanks
Mike

2

Hi Mike,

A message will expire if it has not been downloaded from the recipient mailbox AND acknowledged within 5 days. If the message expires, a non-delivery report will be sent to the sending mailbox. The mex-to value in the NDR will be “mb-us” because that’s who the report is going to (i.e. the sender).

Hope that explains.

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3

Hi Mike,

Thanks for reaching out. You are correct that, after 5 days, if the recipient has not acknowledged the message in their inbox, the message will expire and a non-delivery report will be sent to the original sender’s mailbox.

The report is a message in and of itself. So the mex-to is set to mb-us (the sender of the original message) as that’s who is receiving the report.

I hope that answers your question. Please let me know if you have any further queries.

Best regards,

Dave

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4

I should have mentioned that looking at the documentation at: https://digital.nhs.uk/developer/api-catalogue/message-exchange-for-social-care-and-health-api#overview--errors

Which says “Intended receiver of the undelivered message” I took that to be the mb-recipient mailbox.

5

Hi Mike,

Thanks for pointing that out. I agree, that’s not clear and I think I would interpret that in the same way that you did. I will get the documentation updated to clarify what we are sending.

Many thanks,

Dave

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