Find out why an email you've sent into the system using Inbound email might not come through
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.
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.
There is also a limit to the size of emails sent into the system. If an email is over ~20 MB, it may be rejected for performance and security reasons.
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, we will not be sending any emails from your domain, so for an inbound email to work, DKIM and SPF just need to be enabled on the email domains you are using to access Consultation Manager.
Testing your email domain's security settings:
You can quickly and easily test your email domain's security by going to a mail-testing website and following the instructions, this is the one we use: https://www.mail-tester.com/. Should your emails return a low score when it comes to SPF, DKIM or spam rating, you'll need to reach out to your IT department to improve these.