States and evidence
What each state of a notification and of each recipient means, and what each event proves.
Updated:
Every notification and every recipient has a state. States summarise the recorded events, which are never changed or deleted: each one stores the hash of the one before it, forming a hash chain.
Notification states
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
draft |
A draft. Nothing was sent and no credit was used. |
freezing |
The exact message is being built and its hashes timestamped. |
frozen |
Message frozen and timestamped; ready to go. |
sending |
Handing the message to the mail provider. |
sent |
Sent. From here each recipient's events are recorded. |
failed |
Sending failed; the timeline says why. |
Recipient states
| State | What it proves |
|---|---|
queued |
Queued, not sent yet. |
sent |
Our provider accepted the message. Not delivery yet. |
accepted |
The recipient's mail server accepted the message, with its SMTP answer, the remote server's IP and the time. This is the delivery evidence. |
opened |
A tracking image loaded. Always an indicio, never proof of reading. |
downloaded |
Someone downloaded a document through the personal link (time, IP and browser). |
acknowledged |
The recipient confirmed receipt on their page. |
bounced |
The email bounced: the address does not exist or refused the message. |
deferred |
The remote server asked to retry later. |
complained |
The recipient marked it as spam. |
The events
message.frozen: the .eml and every attachment were hashed and timestamped (RFC 3161) before sending. Proves what was sent.transport.sent: the provider accepted the message for delivery.- Delivery, bounce or deferral: the remote server's answer, stored as received.
- Downloads, openings, recipient replies and the acknowledgement of receipt.
Times are stored in UTC and shown in Colombia time (America/Bogota), with the UTC time beside them.
In the notifications list
Every row in Notifications opens its trace: the condensed timeline of its events, without leaving the list. The events export downloads those events as an Excel workbook, one row per event, for your own tracking.
The constancia de entrega
Once delivery events arrive the constancia is issued: a PDF with the send data, the hashes, the events and the timestamps, with an electronic signature (PAdES) and with a QR code that leads to /verificar. A constancia can be reissued as a later version; earlier ones remain valid records and verification says which one is current.
The full method is in Evidence method.