Failed Call to WhoAmI function!

[Sam Schultz]

Hello:

I am getting drafts with "Failed Call to WhoAmI function! in the body every time an email is sent by our legacy business app (sending purchase orders and sales orders).

When sending an email from within our business app, it first shows a dialog where we can change the recipient email address if we want.  We can also type a message in a text box, and this will become the body of the email that is sent.  We then click Send, and Outlook would be launched and send the email.  

We are getting rid of Outlook desktop app and moving to Office 365 with Outlook Web.  So I would like to use Affixa as the default mail client that our business app can send through.

The issue is that as soon as the dialog box opens where can can change the recipient email address, affixa appears at that time.  We then get the draft with "Failed Call To WhoAmI" in drafts.  As soon as we click Send in the business app, affixa does send the email properly. 

It appears that our business app starts the "communication" with affixa as soon as the dialog box appears, instead of waiting until it has collected all the info and is actually ready to send the email.  This did not cause a problem with Outlook, but with Affixa it apparently does.

I have set the options as follows:

Preferred way of handling:  Send Where Possible

Only Show The Account Picker On Demand

Is there any way to get Affixa to tolerate our apps behavior and wait for our app to collect all the info and send, instead of placing the error message in drafts right away?

Thanks,

[Chris Wood]

Hi Sam,

Thanks for the message!

I think the 'WhoAmI' error must be coming from your business app since there's no such function called that within Affixa. Unfortunately, I don't think there's any way we can get Affixa to be more tolerant of the other app's behaviour either. 

For context, when using Affixa, your business app will be talking to something called "Simple MAPI" in Windows, and in turn Simple MAPI talks to Affixa. My best guess is that when using Outlook, it doesn't actually use Simple MAPI at all. The reason I'm assuming this is because Simple MAPI doesn't support the concept of  partially creating a message and then updating it; it relies on the message being completely constructed prior to Simple MAPI being used.

Sorry this isn't better news, Sam, but I think it's ultimately an issue with the business app.

Happy to help further where I can!

All the best,

Chris

[Sam Schultz]

Hi, Chris, thanks for responding.

Some additional info:  I am certain that our biz app uses Mapi.  The manual says "mapi" but not "simple mapi".  However it is a legacy app and originally used Windows NT with Outlook Express, so it's probably the earliest mapi that was available.  We now use XP with some using Outlook and most using Outlook Express. 

What I am seeing is that Affixa appears the instant that the biz app shows the dialog, and a few seconds later the draft appears in the mailbox with the error.  So simple mapi is triggering Affixa to appear, correct?  And then when we do click send, Affixa appears again and really does send out the email.

I think what is happening is that as soon as the dialog appears, our business app is using some kind of mapi function related to the address book.  When using Outlook, we see a dialog box "A program is trying to access email address information stored in Outlook...  We always click Allow.  I'm not sure why it does this because we do not use anything from the address book.  The email addresses come from a field in the business app itself.  But in any case, the moment this dialog box appears, our biz app is using mapi to ask about something in the address book, and mapi asks outlook, and outlook pops up a security dialog.

When I change the default email client to be Affixa instead of Outlook, the instant the dialog box appears, Affixa places the message in drafts (WhoAmI).  So I think it is happening at the same point where Outlook would have popped up the dialog asking if it is OK to access the address book.  Could Affixa be configured to ignore this particular Mapi call? 

Thanks again.

[Chris Wood]

Hi Sam,

Thanks for the update!

I'll drop you an email directly to take this forward. There are a few things it would be good for you to test, if that's OK?

I'll report back here afterwards so anybody else interested can see the results.

Chris