The current flow for emails on iSAMS is that iSAMS prepares the email and submits it to MailBee.NET, an internal coding framework for sending emails out. MailBee.NET then dials out to Sendgrid/whatever server is configured, which is the SMTP server that actually sends the email.
Currently, MailBee.NET opens a brand new connection to Sendgrid for every single email that gets sends out. This introduces a huge amount of overhead, slowing down the rate of sending emails.
For every email, 1-2s is spent initialising MailBee.NET, dialling out and authenticating with Sendgrid, reducing the rate of email sending.
MailBee.NET version 12.3.1, the version iSAMS is using, supports both sending multiple emails in a single session, and using multithreading to have multiple connections to Sendgrid. Using either of both of these features would speed up email sending massively. The documentation for this can be found here: https://afterlogic.com/mailbee-net/docs/send_multiple.html
As we are a large school, the length of time it takes to send emails like this means that, for example, parent A may receive the email at the start of the batch and talk about the email with parent B. Parent B checks their own email, realises they haven't received it yet and emails into our ICT department, opening a ticket. We then have to track down why the parent hasn't received the email, only to find out that it's because said email is still sending.
Additionally, because only one email can be sent at a time; emails take so long to send; and they get queued sequentially, parents are unable to reset their passwords or know they've been locked out when any email is being sent out by any member of staff. This means they have to spend time emailing into our ICT support team, and also means they would not be informed of unauthorised changes to their account in a timely manner, introducing unnecessary administrative overhead for our ICT department and additionally heavily impacting the security of our systems.
