An example of a typical technical support request I have received from my customers. If this is not finding a needle in the sea, it is close :)

1. ‘One out of 5 users’, good sign to show that the mail server is working. Reason, if a mail server is down, it will affect all 5 users than just one.

2. Oh ya, since she mentioned about the word ‘receive selected email’, this further narrow down the mail server to the Incoming mail server or POP3 server only, instead of Outgoing mail server or SMTP server.

3. ‘…selected email especially which sent from Vietnam’. Hmm, this can be a wee bit tough. We need to know what are those email addresses? From there, we can tell if the Sender email address is bad, or at least to figure out some hint from the Sender’s mail server.

4. ‘…one of the users’. This is another one, we need to know exactly who are this user? Having the email address of this user with problem, allow us to check his/her Spam box to find any trapped email, or to check if there are any unaware forwarding rules, filtering rules or even a black list related to Sender email address.

5. Is the user using Webmail, or any email client such as Outlook or Outlook Express? This is important to us!

6. Is sender getting any Returned Mail. It has useful information to tell where goes wrong.

7. Vietnam, thanks. This is somehow useful, thanks :)

8. ‘Pls help to solve this problem asap’. We would love to help diving into the sea and fight with the great white shark to get the needle for you. See, every email problem can be solved, so don’t worry. We just need some info from you and some passion and patience from us, that is about it :)