NOTE: In the items below, simply replace “example.com” with your domain name.

 

General DNS Entries

 

There are several DNS entries that are required in order to activate your professional email service.  Below, these are listed as well as their function.

mail.example.com        A                                  41.185.110.240

smtp.example.com       cname                          Mail.example.com
pop.example.com         cname                          Mail.example.com
imap.example.com       cname                          Mail.example.com


                                        mx                   5          1-grid-mx01.co.za 

·                                       mx                   5          1-grid-mx02.com
                                        mx                   5          1-grid-mx03.co.za
                                        mx                   5          1-grid-mx04.com

                                        txt                           ”  v=spf1 mx a ip4: ($serverip$)a:mail.example.com a:smtp.mail.example.com include:relay.mailchannels.net ~all”

 Autodiscover

 Autodiscover is a way to allow users to quickly and easily set up accounts in email clients, both on desktop and mobile. Autodiscover is just that: a way for user settings to be discovered, automatically, by the email client. These settings include incoming/outgoing mail server info, ports used, etc. However, in order for autodiscover to work, it requires DNS entries.

To set up autodiscover in DNS, you need to add the following:

·         A Record – This should be set to “autodiscover.$servername$.1.grid.com”, and point to the IP address of that domain’s mail server. ($serverip$)

·         SRV Record – This record returns the available domain and the service being used back to the client. The format for the SRV is “_autodiscover._tcp.example.com”. Here’s an example of the SRV:

Domain: $servername$.1-grid.com Service:_Autodiscover Protocol:_tcp Priority:0 Weight:0 Port:443

NOTE: Not all devices and email clients handle autodiscover in the same way. Therefore, just because you set up autodiscover doesn’t mean it will work for each user.

DKIM

Most major email providers require an additional layer of security before they’ll accept incoming email. Free email providers like Gmail, Yahoo! and Outlook.com are using these “mail signing protocols” as a way to further protect their users from unwanted email and phishing schemes. Therefore, having DKIM set up for your mail domains is an very, VERY good idea.

To set up DKIM, you’ll first want to enable it for a domain within SmarterMail. This is handled on the Domain Admin side, go to the domain’s Settings page. On the Email Signing card, click “Enable”. A modal window opens up containing both a Text Record Name and a Text Record Value. BOTH of these need to be added as TXT records to the DNS for the domain in order for DKIM to work. You can simply copy/paste the values into whatever interface is used for DNS management. For example:

Host Name:8D48750357DA749._domainKey.example.com Text:p=MIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEAk+caX2o1xAtkGdQSNrtNNhvNCpfbdXOVTmm+ol0E7 uKWYTqbFuyFEncusd1XGNQSC8Nzifn0qikrgSBG0xHUZJ+6GVcyQw42oRl7Kej1F8YY bX4uHzLVv1uned2leDpSiSOLca2Q0arBtlyxzPNZ4P8YqujHydRsRwfJvYqvO9ge5eJFbEwCXq0d1bF8F cCkm6gghYzQyaPPCpni8bu99uYwlqf7kJHEG4gH2YKhkYDgzg61+3wmu7gIv6ix3p5rBFmY6tC62d5p9Y8ZOyL1bbo5 kFGMnvKc1CaxkTCoupBOflTOkDMzwht3RGClOk5DX3in6/80DQmwsFNfZkDa3QIDAQAB Time to Live (TTL):5 minutes