Inbound email - Technical Requirements

Inbound Email is a feature that allows Users to send emails with Stakeholders directly into your system whilst linking it to the relevant Project. This works with any email client as you are just sending an email to CM.

Required System Role: Standard User

Required Team Role: Viewer 

Read about our security measures to keep your system secure through our inbound email tool

This feature will only work if the Email is sent from an email address associated with a User in your system. They also need to have access to the Project they are trying to send emails.

For Inbound email to work, your email domain (@consultationmanager.com for example) needs to have a strong Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) spam configuration via Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM).

What does that mean?

SMTP is a communication protocol used to send emails. Using DKIM and SPF on your SMTP gives your email a signature that protects against spoofing, phishing, or impersonation.

We need these minimum requirements in place to ensure that the data we're receiving in your system is authentically from you as people attempting to send emails that appear from your domain could potentially impact your data and security.

At the moment, we require both DKIM and SPF to be active as together they provide the best security outcomes as they protect against spoofing in different ways: SPF uses path-based authentication while DKIM uses an identity-based authentication.

How do I get this set up?

If your Inbound email feature isn't working automatically, you may need to get your IT department to help you get these set up. DKIM and SPF will require new DNS records added to your organisation.

As an alternative, we can turn off DKIM or SPF for your database by request.

Please note, that we will not be sending any emails from your domain, so for inbound email to work, DKIM and SPF just need to be enabled on the email domains you are using to access Consultation Manager.