Where comes the completion time from when sending emails using the API.

pniehot

When sending emails you can retrieve the completion time but how is this calculated. It is not the time after delivery. Is it after the delivery to the recipients email box or after the expiration time of an email job? It looks like there are some dependencies on the completion time? I assume posted is the time handed over to the MTA on the receving site.

Tammy_Gargiulo

Whether a job has a single destination or multiple deliveries, the completion time for an email job is logged shortly after the final delivery is done (including retries and reports).

Completion time for enhanced email jobs is determined by the value defined in “ExpirationDays” in the JobSubmitRequest (a minimum of "1" day after the job enters the system), (https://apiforums.easylink.com/emapidocs/26/JobSubmit/EnhancedEmailOptions.html#LN93).  If "ExpirationDays" is not used in the JobSubmitRequest, the completion time is set to the system default of 3 days from the time the job enters the system. The completion time allows the job to collect things like opens, pulls, and clicks, all of which are recorded as part of the job. 

If you are interested in the time at which all primary deliveries have been attempted, you should look at the PostedTime instead of the completion time, (https://apiforums.easylink.com/emapidocs/26/JobDeliveryStatus/JobDeliveryStatusResult.html#LN46).