Which troubleshooting step allows you to examine the full message headers for the offending message to determine why the messages are not being delivered?

An end user informs you that they are having issues receiving mail from a specific sender that is external to your organization. You believe the issue may be caused by the external entity’s SPF record being incorrectly configured.

Which troubleshooting step allows you to examine the full message headers for the offending message to determine why the messages are not being delivered?

A. Use the Postmaster Tools API to pull the message headers.

B. Use the Email Log Search to directly review the message headers.

C. Use the Security Investigation Tool to review the message headers.

D. Perform an SPF record check on the domain to determine whether their SPF record is valid.

Answer: B

Explanation:

The Email Log Search in the Google Workspace Admin Console allows administrators to search email logs for specific messages based on various criteria, including sender, recipient, and time frame. Once you find the specific email in question, you can view its message headers to analyze the SPF and other authentication results. This feature is designed for troubleshooting email delivery issues, making it the most suitable tool for this situation.

Let’s consider the other options:

A. Postmaster Tools API is generally more useful for domain-level reputation tracking and doesn’t provide the granularity of looking at individual message headers for troubleshooting purposes.

C. The Security Investigation Tool is more focused on investigating security incidents across Google Workspace services and is not designed to specifically troubleshoot email delivery issues based on message headers.

D. Performing an SPF record check on the domain could help you determine whether the SPF record is valid, but it won’t give you specific details on why a particular email from that domain wasn’t delivered.

Therefore, option B is the most appropriate for troubleshooting this specific issue.