Enabling DKIM/SPF to Improve Email Deliverability

Article Sections

• Generating Your DNS Records
• Frequently Asked Questions

Overview

This document describes how to improve email deliverability by generating a set of DNS records that you can add to your hosting provider, domain registrar, or DNS provider in order to verify PeopleGrove as an authorized sender as well as add a digital signature to your emails’ headers. This grants PeopleGrove permission to send emails from our mail servers on your behalf.

Generating Your DNS Records

Lost? Site-Wide Admin → Technical Setup→ Email Settings

First, you'll need to generate a set of DNS records for your domain. To do so, click Verify New Domain.

A pop-up window will appear asking you to enter the domain you're sending emails from. For example, if you plan to send emails from info@myschool.edu, you'll enter “myschool.edu” into the field, as shown above.

This generates a list of CNAME and TXT records you’ll need to add to your hosting provider, domain registrar, or DNS provider.

Note: If the person responsible for adding these records on your end does not have access to your PeopleGrove site, you can send them an email which contains all of the generated records. To do so, enter their email address in the field in the bottom left corner of the set of records, and click Email Instructions. They will receive an email in the next few minutes from tech@peoplegrove.com with the subject Help with PeopleGrove Setup.

Once you've successfully added the records, return to the Email Settings module, and click Verify Records. If successful, the status of each record will change to Verified.

Note: Depending on your organization's set up, you may need to add these records to your internal DNS network as well in order to verify them both internally and externally. If your users report encountering an error when clicking a link in one of your platform emails, it's likely that your DNS records were not verified internally and externally.

Frequently Asked Questions

I added the records correctly, but they won’t verify.

Depending on your provider, you may need to enter the root instead of the whole record. For example: “url7989.” (including the period) instead of “url7989.myschool.edu”.

You can confirm this by visiting G Suite Toolbox Dig and entering one of the host values you’ve added. In the example above, you would enter “url7989.myschool.edu”. If set up correctly, you’ll see multiple records listed. If not, try adding the domain twice. In the example above, enter “url7989.myschool.edu.myschool.edu”. If the latter gets a response, remove the domain (e.g. “myschool.edu”) from all records and verify again.