EBS 12.2 -- Wf Mailer ( Mail Status SENT but No Email Delivered + Email From Section cannot be set to desired email address)

EBS Workflow Mailer  A Tale of Two Mysteries 

Alright folks, buckle up for some classic EBS weirdness! This one involves the Workflow Notification Mailer in a fresh Oracle EBS 12.2.11 project. We got it all configured, tested it – IMAP, SMTP, everything seemed okay. But then, like a magic trick gone wrong, emails stopped flowing. 

The customer's mail admin checked the server logs, but saw nothing. Their words? "Your mailer taps the SMTP server on the shoulder, then just walks away. No emails, no nothin'." We chased network packets, analyzed traces – same story. The mailer wasn't even attempting to send anything. No errors,  just a complete disregard for its duties.

Telnet tests? Perfect. Workflow mail status? "SENT".  We disabled everything : disabling TLS/SSL, using relays – nothing worked. Finally, in a moment of desperation, we cleared the functional admin cache and restarted the mailer. And bam! Emails started flowing again.

We suspect a wrong configuration stuck there, during all our testing. Maybe a change, not even directly related to the mailer, messed with some underlying setting it relies on (a sneaky delivery preference, perhaps?). Whatever it was, clearing the cache did the trick.

But wait, there's more! The emails sent by the mailer had some strange "From" address, in the format of "<Workflow SMTP account/username>". We tried everything on the mailer side to change it, but nothing helped. Turns out, the mail server itself was missing a crucial piece – the setting of the display name. Without it, the server's default config (for the from field) was overriding (it seems so) the workflow mailer's settings.

So, the customer added a display name – "WF Mailer PROD EBS 12.2" (exactly what we wanted!) – on the mail server. And mystery number two solved.

Moral of the story? EBS can be a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get. But hey, at least we got the mail flowing and the "From" address looking as we wanted. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need a strong cup of coffee to recover from that rollercoaster ride :)