"FAIL No Direct certificates found for the specified recipient." Error

This error occurs when a recipient being added with the addRecipient(...) method does not correspond to a publicly-hosted Direct certificate. Please refer to the TO command on page 13 of the EMR Direct phiMail API guide for more information. phiMail will only exchange Direct messages with other trusted Direct addresses and a Direct certificate must be hosted in DNS or LDAP to enable exchange with any Direct address. This is by design, and is in compliance with the Direct protocol. There are a couple of reasons why this error is encountered.

First, confirm that the Direct address is spelled correctly. Mistyping the address is one reason for this error.

If the recipient is a regular email address, like one from Gmail or Yahoo!, you will not be able to send Direct messages to it using phiMail in the production or sandbox environments. Direct addresses often have the word "direct" right after the "@" in the address, to make them easy to recognize and to distinguish them from regular email addresses, but this is not always the case.

Another reason the error occurs is when the recipient's Direct address is not properly configured on the receiving side (has not yet been turned on, has been disabled, certificate is not properly hosted, etc.).

In either case, sending a test message to another Direct address, and having them send a message back to you, is a great way to double-check that you have a valid Direct address for a counter party and that their address is both properly configured by their HISP and is trusted by your account.

Did this article answer your question? If not, please contact us.