Chat Summary skipping bug

merefield · March 7, 2025, 2:05pm

Chat Summary emails are being skipped for users with a valid email:

I’ve done some analysis and I believe I know why:

Here’s ultimately where the skipping happens:

lib/email/sender.rb

ffdc97f37


      
                 begin
                   @message.message
                 rescue StandardError
                   nil
                 end
               )
            return
          end
          
          return skip(SkippedEmailLog.reason_types[:sender_message_blank]) if @message.blank?
          return skip(SkippedEmailLog.reason_types[:sender_message_to_blank]) if @message.to.blank?
          
          if SiteSetting.disable_emails == "non-staff" && !bypass_disable
            return unless find_user&.staff?
          end
          
          if to_address.end_with?(".invalid")
            return skip(SkippedEmailLog.reason_types[:sender_message_to_invalid])
          end
          
          if @message.text_part

This is because message.to is blank.

message.to is blank because the arguments sent to send_user_email do not include to_address and this is never enriched with the user’s primary email, e.g.:

args: {"type"=>"chat_summary", "user_id"=>3, "force_respect_seen_recently"=>true, "current_site_id"=>"default"}

github.com/discourse/discourse

app/jobs/regular/user_email.rb

ffdc97f37


      
            args[:type] = args[:type].to_s
          
            send_user_email(args)
          
            if args[:type] == "digest"
              # Record every attempt at sending a digest email, even if it was skipped
              UserStat.where(user_id: args[:user_id]).update_all(digest_attempted_at: Time.current)
            end
          end
          
          def send_user_email(args)
            post = nil
            notification = nil
            type = args[:type]
            user = User.find_by(id: args[:user_id])
            to_address =
              args[:to_address].presence || user&.primary_email&.email.presence || "no_email_found"
          
            set_skip_context(type, args[:user_id], to_address, args[:post_id])
          
            return skip(SkippedEmailLog.reason_types[:user_email_no_user]) if !user

This is called by Chat Mailer, and you will notice that to_address is missing:

github.com/discourse/discourse

plugins/chat/lib/chat/mailer.rb

ffdc97f37


      
            return unless SiteSetting.chat_enabled
          
            User
              .real
              .activated
              .not_staged
              .not_suspended
              .where(id: users_with_unreads)
              .find_each do |user|
                if DiscoursePluginRegistry.apply_modifier(:chat_mailer_send_summary_to_user, true, user)
                  Jobs.enqueue(
                    :user_email,
                    type: "chat_summary",
                    user_id: user.id,
                    force_respect_seen_recently: true,
                  )
                end
              end
          end
          
          private

and that is maybe fine, but by the time you get to the top of send_user_email, I believe to_address should be enriched with the user email so that when it is passed forward, the emailer is given access to this property and the emailing succeeds.

When I added this small monkey-patch to send_user_email, the problem goes away:

      # CORE BUG: if we don't set to_address, ultimately the email won't send and will be skipped.
      # This is a core bug and we will need to raise it on Meta.
      if args[:to_address].blank? && user&.primary_email&.email
        args[:to_address] = user&.primary_email&.email
      end

sam · March 9, 2025, 11:07pm

Thanks heaps for the debugging @merefield , will make sure the member xp have a look at this soon.

davidb · May 26, 2025, 3:23pm

I had a bit of a dig into this, and if we follow the trail there should be enrichment:

It starts from emailer here and then it calls the user notification extension which enriches with the user email here and then passes it to the build email helper here and finally sets the address in the message builder here before sending it.

Aside from that the chat summary email already works on other sites so there is likely something else that is causing an issue here.

I think an interim solution is to pass the user email to the job which should give us a bit more confidence/visibility that the correct data is there from the outset:

Topic		Replies	Views
Email notifications Feature chat , completed	3	640	August 13, 2022
Activity Summary not sent if other emails are sent Feature email , completed , activity-summary	19	844	July 18, 2024
Why are weekly summary emails on by default? Feature activity-summary	7	784	May 29, 2025
Samples of emails? Support	3	856	June 11, 2023
Notification emails not being sent for Chat as per user preference Bug chat	27	1402	July 4, 2023

Chat Summary skipping bug

Related topics