Email Request Queue and Leaving Emails on your Server

For those of you who are using the Intervals Email Request Queue to field requests from your clients, we have some special instructions to help maintain a speedy and consistent retrieval of emails from your server. When setting up your mail queue Intervals gives you the option to leave the emails on the server. When using this option, please be sure to whittle down your inbox on a regular basis by deleting already processed emails or moving them to a different folder.

The reason for this is that Intervals does not know which emails it has already processed until it has a chance to validate the email against a unique signature stored internally. So even if the email has already been processed, it will still be verified by Intervals each time the server is queried. If your inbox starts to pile up with emails this can put a strain on the request queue, resulting in newer emails never making it to the queue.

Unfortunately, this is a limitation of POP and IMAP protocols and there isn't much we can do other than to encourage our users to keep their inboxes to a minimum.