Temporary Hold

A Temporary Hold rule keeps outgoing email for a short time before delivery, so the sender can catch a mistake: a wrong recipient, a missing attachment, a message sent too early. During the hold the sender can send the email right away, discard it, or pause it. This page covers the rule wizard, every option, the notifications, and what senders see.

Note: Formerly called Send Delay.

Before you begin

• Your outbound mail is routed through mxHERO. See Routing Architectures.
• The senders you want to hold are managed accounts in Settings › Accounts and Groups. Held emails are managed in the End User App, which identifies users by these accounts.
• Decide whether senders sign in to the End User App (https://app.mxhero.com) and how. Check Settings › Security › mxHERO End User Application. See Security Settings.
• Tell users what to expect. See Managing Held Emails and Planning End User Communications.

How it works

What happens to a held email, depending on the sender's action and the rule's options.

1. A user sends an email that matches the rule.
2. mxHERO stores the email and doesn't deliver it. If sender notifications are on, the sender gets a notice with links.
3. During the hold, the sender (or someone allowed to act for them) can:
   • send it now: the email is delivered at once;
   • discard it: the email is never delivered;
   • pause it, if the rule allows: the hold is extended to 7 days from the pause.
4. When the hold time ends with no action, the email is delivered, unless the rule has Reject email if no action is taken turned on, in which case it's discarded.
5. A paused email that reaches the end of its extended hold is discarded, not delivered.

Temporary Hold rules run before Request Approval, Copy Emails and the storage actions, and after S/MIME and Block Attachments. When a held email is released, mxHERO continues processing it, so later rules (for example Protect Attachments) still apply. See How Rules Work.

Create a Temporary Hold rule

Unlike most actions, the Target step comes first.

Step 1: Target

1. Open Rules › Create a Rule, click Temporary Hold, then Start Rule Creation.

2. Under Rule Scope:, click Email Flow (the only choice).

3. Choose how emails with several recipients are held:

   Option	Effect
   Mails for all recipients will be held if at least one matches (default)	If any recipient matches the rule, the whole email is held for everyone. One hold, one decision.
   Recipients will be evaluated individually, only mails with matching recipients will be held.	Only the copies to matching recipients are held. The others are delivered at once.

4. Under Target all emails sent:, the first field is fixed to From. Choose the Sender (default Organization) and the Recipient (default Anyone). For example, hold only email leaving the company with Organization to Anyone else.

   

   With the default "held for all" option, the Sender must be your own users (Organization, one of your domains, groups, tags or addresses). Anyone and Anyone else are not accepted as the sender.

5. Optionally open Advanced Options:

   • Include From, To and CC when evaluating which emails will be processed. On by default for Temporary Hold. The rule also matches addresses in the From, To and Cc headers, so an email is held when any visible recipient matches, not only the envelope recipient.
   • Include From header when evaluating which emails will be processed. Not available while the option above is on.

6. Click Confirm.

Add Filters: Target Filters (optional)

Click Add Filters under the Target step. Turn on what you need:

• Use filter policy: hold only when the selected filter policy matches, for example emails whose subject contains "invoice". See Filter Policies.
• Process only managed accounts: the sender or recipient must be an account in Settings › Accounts and Groups.
• Sender/Recipient (From/To) Exclusions: pairs of addresses the rule skips. Click Add another exclusion for more pairs.

When you turn on exclusions, an Exclusion matching option appears below the list:

Use All recipients when an excluded address is often copied on emails that should still be held. For example, with an exclusion for archive@example.com, an email to archive@example.com and a client is held only with All recipients.

Exclusions are checked last, after the sender and recipient match and the attachment filter. See Filters and Exclusions.

#nomxhero in the subject does not skip a Temporary Hold rule.

Step 2: Temporary Hold

1. In Delay the delivery of the emails for, enter a number and choose minutes, hours or days.

   

   The field is pre-filled with 20 minutes.

   Allowed values in the dashboard: 3–43,200 minutes, 1–720 hours, or 1–30 days. The help text says "The maximum allowable delay is 10 days." Until the limits are confirmed, keep holds within the 10 days in the help text, enter holds longer than 60 minutes in hours, and holds longer than 24 hours in days.

2. Click Confirm.

Most organizations use 2 to 30 minutes for "catch my mistake" holds, and hours or days only for compliance reviews.

Step 2 Advanced Options

Open Advanced Options in the Temporary Hold step.

Important: With Reject email if no action is taken on, an email nobody acts on is lost. Turn on sender notifications so senders know they must act.

If you switch the unit to minutes after adding a reminder, the dashboard asks you to confirm, then removes the reminder.

Add attachment filter (optional)

Click Add attachment filter below step 2 to hold only emails with certain attachments.

Note: Adding this panel restricts the rule to emails with attachments. Only emails carrying at least one attachment that matches the conditions are held. Emails without attachments are never held by this rule.

Without Include TNEF messages, TNEF messages are never held. See Preventing TNEF Encapsulation.

Name and save

1. In the right column, enter a Rule Name and optionally a Rule Description.
2. Set Locale to the language of your senders if it differs from the organization's. Default notification texts follow it.
3. Click Save Rule. New rules are enabled at once and apply within one to two minutes.

Notifications

All notifications go to the sender. Texts can be edited per rule; type { in a body field to see the placeholders you can insert.

Enable Sender Notifications (sent when an email is held):

Enable Completion Notifications (sent when the hold ends):

Note: The default Canceled body text mentions a supervisor, which doesn't apply to a hold. Replace it, for example with "You canceled this email. It has not been sent."

Reminders (hours or days only): set the interval (default when turned on: every 2 hours) and the reminder title and body. The interval can't be longer than the hold, and has a minimum that depends on the hold length:

Limits: titles 115 characters, link labels 54, bodies 1,500. For all notification texts in one place, see Notification Templates.

What senders and admins do

Senders manage held email from the notice links or in the End User App, Temporary Hold section: send now, discard, pause, and download the held email as an .eml file while it's pending. The full user guide is Managing Held Emails.

Who else can see and act on held email:

• Approval groups. In Settings › Accounts and Groups, an account's Approval groups field lets members of those groups act on that account's held emails in the End User App, for example an assistant for an executive. See Managing Accounts.
• Message visibility. Settings › Security › Temporary hold permissions sets what users see in the history: Team (default), Personal only or Acted on. See Security Settings.
• Admin view. Owners, and Administrators with the Temporary Hold admin-view permission, can see and act on all held email in the End User App. See Users and Roles.

Verify

1. Create the rule for a pilot sender only (Sender = that address), with Enable Sender Notifications on and a 5-minute hold.
2. Send a test email to an external mailbox you control. The recipient should get nothing, and the sender should get the hold notice.
3. In Reports › Email Flow Logs, the message shows Retained Emails while held. See Email Flow Logs.
4. Test each path: click ACCESS and send now; send another and click CANCEL; send a third and let the hold expire.
5. After release, the log shows the email delivered. After discard, it shows Dropped by rule action.

Limits and failure behavior

• Email Flow only, outbound from your users. Mail already in mailboxes can't be held.
• One hold per email per rule. If the same email reaches mxHERO again for more recipients, they join the existing hold.
• If mxHERO can't store the email for the hold, the hold is skipped and the email is delivered without delay. The error appears in Email Flow Logs and Reports › Notifications.
• Emails that Outlook and Exchange send with the same Message-ID are held and released separately.
• Held email is stored by mxHERO until it is released or discarded.

Troubleshooting

Related pages

• Managing Held Emails (end users)
• Request Approval
• Create a Rule
• Filters and Exclusions
• Notification Templates
• Security Settings
• Email Flow Logs