Setting up Sending domains for Showpad

What's in it for you

When your users share files from the Showpad platform, the email to the prospect is sent from share@showpad.com (regular shares) or noreply@showpad.com (for Shared spaces). If their prospects reply on that email, it's redirected to your user's email address.

However, to make it more personal and to avoid being marked as spam, it's possible to send the initial email from your user's company email address instead of using Showpad's default addresses. To do this, you can set up sending domains for your organization.

To configure the sending domains, you need to have access to your company domain and email settings.

Note: Cooperate with your IT department if terms like DNS, SPF, DKIM, and MX settings sound unfamiliar. You need access to these domain settings when configuring the more technical side of this useful feature.

Key features

• Let users send out share emails using their company email address
• Make share emails for prospects more personal
• Share emails are less classified as spam

You need this to succeed

• Administrator access on Showpad's Online Platform to check sending domain configuration settings
• Cooperate with your IT department to add the sending domain configurations to your domain settings

The quick way to awesomeness

• Collecting the sending domain details
• Verifying the DNS settings
• Going from red to green dots

Collecting the sending domain details

First, we need to find the configuration settings in Showpad's Online Platform. These details are necessary for your IT department to configure the sending domains.

1. Go to the Online Platform, Admin Settings, and Sending Domains.
   
2. Here, you have the option to choose between sending from Showpad domain or from your users' company email addresses. If you select the first option, all emails are sent via the default Showpad addresses. If you select the second option, only users who have sending domains configured are able to send emails from their own addresses. Others will still use the default way of sharing. To set up sending from the user's email address, select the second option and click Save.
   
3. Most likely you will already see a list of different sending domains you can configure. The domains you see here are automatically added, based on the email addresses of the users you added to the Online Platform. For example, when you create a user with nettie.pierce@myorganization.com as email address, it will automatically add myorganization.com as a domain name in this list. The domains in the screenshot were added as an example.
   
4. DKIM is a signing key for the message which proves that content was not altered by any server along the way.
   SPF and SenderID allow a domain owner to add a file or record on the server that the recipient server cross-checks. This so-called Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email validation protocol designed to detect and block email spoofing and verifies that incoming mail from a domain comes from an IP Address authorized by the domain administrator.
   An extra mandatory permission (TXT) record is for verification. The TXT record is unique for each Showpad instance and ensures that no other Showpad instance will be able to send from your domain. Implementing SPF, DKIM and verification are necessary to make sending domains work.

   Note: Adding the MX record is strongly encouraged to prevent internal sharing problems and is extra security against being marked as spam.

5. If you see that all the dots for a specific sending domain are red, it means that the configurations have not been set in place (yet) for that sending domain. If you wish to set it up, reach out to your IT team and provide them with the configuration settings. You can find these settings by clicking the DNS Configuration button.
   
6. Let's show in detail what this looks like and how you can provide these details to your IT team.
   
   DKIM
   Host:
   m1._domainkey.{HOSTNAME}
   Example:
   m1._domainkey.showpad.com
   Values:
   k=rsa; t=s; p=MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQDliDrtiw6YnNN+qhifgfb+U4aurzGRHrQSVcFncvHsxo4GwYvjM+wSvTDOgfIoGnHfBxkq/emhPhtpmIYgtrsZMUlt7Sw6ROJF5Cxg/YHmBAa9koNjPpGyhGTxwa4cPqhTOip2pQdHlX5y9o5fXs7gGRJ2kufr8VJvC902Dr8l4QIDAQAB
   
   If your DNS provider uses 'escaping', meaning you can't use semicolons, use a backslash and a semicolon instead:
   
   k=rsa\; t=s\; p=MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQDliDrtiw6YnNN+qhifgfb+U4aurzGRHrQSVcFncvHsxo4GwYvjM+wSvTDOgfIoGnHfBxkq/emhPhtpmIYgtrsZMUlt7Sw6ROJF5Cxg/YHmBAa9koNjPpGyhGTxwa4cPqhTOip2pQdHlX5y9o5fXs7gGRJ2kufr8VJvC902Dr8l4QIDAQAB
   
   SPF
   Host:
   showpad.{HOSTNAME}
   Example:
   showpad.myorganization.com
   Values:
   v=spf1 include:sendgrid.net ~all
   
   MX
   Host:
   showpad.{HOSTNAME}
   Example:
   showpad.myorganization.com
   Values:
   mx.sendgrid.net.
   
   TXT
   Host:
   showpad.{HOSTNAME}
   Example:
   showpad.myorganization.com
   Values:
   showpad-verification=1234567asdfghjll (fictional)
   
   
7. Provide these details to your IT team and let them implement the changes on your company's domain settings.

   Note: Depending on the domain configuration, it can take up to 24 hours before DNS changes are visible.

Verifying the DNS settings

After the domain changes were implemented, you can activate and test the sending domain settings in the Online Platform. If all buttons are green, everything is set up correctly.

1. Verify that the sending domains are activated.
2. Click Verify DNS Settings for the domain that was set up. The buttons in the row for that domain should be green.
   
   
3. If some dots are red, it most likely means that some settings have not been configured correctly on your company's domain or more time is needed to implement the DNS changes. If this is the case, it is time to loop in your IT team to check all the necessary configurations.

Going from red to green dots

We provide this helpful checklist in case the indicators are red.

• Confirm with your IT team that the sending domains have been configured on the company's domain side.
• The timespan of the changes to the DNS settings can take up to 24h to fully populate. That's the maximum time needed for all servers to know the changed records. We advise you to wait and try to verify the settings again on the next day.
• Make sure you have not forgotten to add Showpad to the keys of your settings. For example, it can happen that the configuration was set in place for myorganization.com instead of showpad.myorganization.com
• Make sure there are no extra spaces or missing letters in the settings. We advise copy-pasting keys and values to make sure everything is correct.
• If you have reached your threshold for SPF or DKIM records, please reach out to support.