Xplan Essentials (UK) - Emailing from Xplan (action required)

[david.mann]

Managing emails sent out of Xplan on your behalf

Overview

If you have clients who use Client Portal, or use email out of Xplan, then you will need to take action as outlined below.  If no action is taken, then some emails may not reach their intended recipients.

There are a number of situations where you may need Xplan to send out emails on your behalf, such as: -

• Task notifications to your team
• Emails sent directly to clients / users / others via the Xplan email editor
• Notifications triggered by the client via Client Portal

Some large email providers, such as Google and Yahoo have recently increased the security requirements placed on email domains (e.g. @yourcompanyname.co.uk).

The Xplan product team (from Xplan version .313) have implemented a change to help you meet these requirements.  You will need some help from whoever manages your IT systems.

Notes

• It’s important to know that these additional requirements will also be required within other software you use, it is not exclusive to Xplan (or just Iress products).

• If you do not send any emails out of Xplan, or you don’t use Client Portal for your clients, then no action is required.

• If you do use Client Portal or email out of Xplan, you will need to take action.

Contents

• Introduction
• What action do I need to take?
• What do I need to do if I don't have my own email domain?
• I have a question or need more explanation
• Instructions for IT support teams

Introduction

Emails sent from Xplan will use your email address as the sender, but use Iress’ systems to send the email out.  The mismatch between the sender’s email address and where the email actually came from can be flagged as a problem by some email service providers.

Our previous guidance was to ask our clients to approach their Email Service Provider (ESP), usually via their IT team or consultant, and ask for their Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record to be updated.  Once applied, the update meant that emails coming from Iress systems like Xplan should be trusted to the same extent as emails coming directly from our client firms.

These previous recommendations still apply now, but there is now an additional requirement - to ensure a Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) record is created in your Xplan site and then updated with your Email Service Provider.  Most providers will not charge you for this service.  You will need support from whoever manages your IT systems.

What action do I need to take?

Please fill in the "Register my email domain with Xplan" form within the Essentials site services tile in Iress Connect.  If you don't have access, then one of your colleagues can request that you are added using the "Access to Iress Connect" form.  If none of your colleagues can help, please get in touch with the account management team.

All you need is the email domain (or domains) that your organisation uses.  For example, if your work email address is stephen@abcfinancial.co.uk, then your email domain is abcfinancial.co.uk. 

We will add the site configuration for you and send back the information your IT team needs to add.  Instructions for them can be found below in the Instructions for IT support teams section.  

What do I need to do if I don't have my own email domain?

Occasionally, we see that a few Xplan users - usually very small firms - don't have their own email domain and use email addresses such as @btinternet.com or @gmail.com.  

If this applies to you - then you won't be able to reliably email out of Xplan due to the changes we're describing here. These email domains are owned by large companies like BT or Google, so you or your IT support person won't be able to make the changes needed.

The only resolution if you want to use email out of Xplan is to purchase your own email domain.  This will give you access to make the required changes as you will then be the owner of that domain.

Remember, it's not just Xplan or Iress that these changes affect - it's any third party application which uses your email address.

I have a question or need more explanation

We appreciate this is a technical change and have tried to be as explicit as possible.  Your IT support person / team / consultant will usually know what to do for these types of change. 

The basic steps are: -

1) Provide us with your email domain (this is the part of your email address after the @ symbol).  So fred@example.com has an email domain of example.com.

2) Send us the name of your email domain in the form mentioned above.

3) We will then send you some information that you can simply pass onto your IT support person with the instructions in the section below.  They will usually be able to do this for you quickly and, once set, you can forget about it!

4) When they have completed this work, just let us know and we'll do the rest.

If you are still struggling, please contact the Support team in the usual way and we will help you.

 

Instructions for IT support teams

1. Take both copies of the text provided by the Xplan site administrator (see above) and go to your Email Service Provider’s administration portal.  We will provide you with two keys so that Xplan will automatically rotate them every three months to ensure the security is as strong as it can be.
2. Locate the DNS records area (this will differ depending on which provider you use).  This example is from a provider called Ionos: -

3. Add a new CNAME record (example shown again from IONOS): -

4. From the text you copied from step 1, select everything up to just before the CNAME word.  For example, if the text was iress-xplancentral1-abcfinancial.co.uk._domainkey.abcfinancial.co.uk CNAME iress-xplancentral1-abcfinancial.co.uk._dkimkey.xplan.iress.co.uk, then just copy iress-xplancentral1-abcfinancial.co.uk._domainkey.abcfinancial.co.uk.

5. Paste that into the hostname field.  Next select everything from after the CNAME word and paste it into the 'Points to' field (again, other Internet Service Providers might differ):

6. Repeat steps 2-5 with the second piece of text.  

7. Once saved, the final step is to send a test email from your Xplan site to a Google / Yahoo etc account of your choice.

This currently seems sufficient to meet the requirements of the large email providers, but to fully meet the requirements, we would recommend that your IT team add another type of record - a DMARC record.  This is done entirely with your Internet Services Provider.  An example guide to follow is located here - https://support.google.com/a/answer/2466563?hl=en&ref_topic=2759254.