Tractivity Email Setup Guide for NHS (Technical Documentation)

In this article

• What is Tractivity and why is this email set up needed?
• The 3 configuration options for SENDING email from Tractivity
• Additional configuration if client is using Tractivity's "Shared Mailbox" feature

What is Tractivity and why is this email set up needed?

Tractivity is a stakeholder relationship management web application.

Part of Tractivity's features is to allow stakeholder engagement related emails to be sent to stakeholders (e.g. newsletters / event invitations / surveys etc).

So that stakeholders can recognise the sender of those emails as being the NHS, the email "FROM" address needs to be set to projectname@nhs.net.

This guide will help you configure what is needed so that Tractivity can deliver these emails successfully without getting blocked by spam filters.

The 3 configuration options for SENDING email from Tractivity

For NHS clients, we offer 3 options, starting from the most recommended and preferred option, to the least preferred.

Please choose ONE of the following 3 options. Then, if the NHS client is using our "Shared Mailbox" feature, please configure that too by following the instructions further down this article.

• Option 1 - Using your SMTP server to send email from projectname@nhs.net (recommended)
• Option 2 - We set up a mailbox on OUR email server to send emails from a non NHS email address e.g. "projectname@tracmail.co.uk"
• Option 3 - We use our generic mailbox on OUR server - "mailings@tracmail.co.uk"

Option 1 - Using NHSmail to send email from projectname@nhs.net

This is the recommended option to send email from Tractivity using an @nhs.net email address.

There are some pre-requisites that need to be actioned by NHSmail administrators before Tractivity can be used to send email.

These are:

1. Create an "Application Account" email for projectname@nhs.net whereby "projectname" is the FROM address that you wish to use for sending emails out.
   • Note that user email accounts won't be suitable for sending emails using the Tractivity application, as per NHSmail guidelines.
   • Also note that the application account password will be 20 characters long and will need to be updated every 12 months, also as per NHSmail guidelines.
2. Setup the NHSmail "High Sending Solution" for the new email account that was created in step 1.
   
   • The High Sending Solution is required by NHSmail for email broadcasts of more than 30 recipients per minute. Most features in Tractivity are designed for mass communication (e.g. newsletters, surveys, event invitations etc)
   • More details about the NHSmail High Sending Solution can be found here
3. Once the first 2 steps have been completed, you will need to send Tractivity the following information to support@tractivity.co.uk with the subject line "NHS email setup"

• Tractivity Website URL - the URL where tractivity is installed (e.g. nhsclient.tractivity.co.uk)
• Project Name–which specific NHS project is the SMTP server being used for? (Only applicable if this Tractivity website has more than one Tractivity project within it)
• Email account username - (e.g. projectname@nhs.net)
  
• Password - (This should be 20 characters long as it's an application account password)
  

Please note, that NHSMail do have some restrictions on how emails are sent via their platform:

• The FROM address that you are using to send emails from in Tractivity, must match the username of the NHS email account. So trying to send an email from projectB@nhs.net using the NHS email account projectA@nhs.net won't work.
• Individual messages must not exceed 35mb in size

• The reply to email address must be valid. Non-delivery addresses, such as
  noreply@nhs.net, must not be used. Applications found using non-delivery addresses may be blocked from NHSmail

Option 2 - We set up a mailbox on OUR email server to send emails from a non NHS email address e.g. "projectname@trac-nhs.co.uk"

An alternative to the previous two options, is that Tractivity can create a mailbox on the NHS client's behalf using a generic domain that we own called "trac-nhs.co.uk".

This will mean that all outbound emails that are sent from Tractivity will have a "FROM" email address as projectname@trac-nhs.co.uk. 

We can also set the "REPLY TO" email address to be either the logged-in user or projectname@nhs.net so that email replies can still be received by the client.

Option 3 - We use our generic mailbox on OUR server - "mailings@tracmail.co.uk"

With this option, the "FROM" address of any emails sent from Tractivity would be set to the NHS client's preferred email address (e.g. projectname@nhs.net) but the sender email would actually be mailings@tracmail.co.uk.

Like Option 3, we can set the "REPLY TO" address as any email the client wishes such as "projectname@nhs.net".

Disadvantage with this approach:

1. Due to the sender email address being mailings@tracmail.co.uk, most email clients will show that the email is being sent from Tractivity "on behalf of" the client's email address.
   
   For example:
   
   It's important that the client is aware of this before we set up this option, as some of our clients in the past have not been keen on this approach as the emails do not appear as being legitimate.

There would be no annual fee with this option.

Again, please make the client aware of the reason you would need to use this option so that they understand the limitations of "on behalf of" and do not blame the Tractivity software for this limitation.

Additional configuration if client is using Tractivity's "Shared Mailbox" feature

What is Shared Mailbox?

The Shared Mailbox is a centralised mailbox inside the Tractivity home screen, which enables Tractivity users to read, respond and tag emails for stakeholder relationship management.

Tractivity automatically imports the emails from an external mailbox, so for example, if the NHS client had an email account projectname@nhs.net, any emails that are sent to that email account from the stakeholders, will appear in the Shared Mailbox screen in Tractivity.

Here's what it looks like in Tractivity:

How does the Shared Mailbox retrieve emails from the client's designated email account?

There are two ways that Tractivity can connect to the email account you are using to receive emails for the NHS client's stakeholder engagement project:

• Shared Mailbox Option 1 - Tractivity will connect directly to the NHSmail Office 365 account using POP3 with oAuth
• Shared Mailbox Option 2 - Tractivity creates an email account on the NHS client's behalf on our server and you then forward emails from your NHS email account to our email account, so we can access the emails that way

Shared Mailbox Option 1 - Tractivity will connect directly to the NHSmail Office 365 account using POP3 with oAuth

To use Shared Mailbox with Office 365, click here to read our dedicated help guide.

Shared Mailbox Option 2 – Use a Tractivity email account and forward your email to us

Tractivity can create an email account on your client's behalf which would look like projectname@trac-nhs.co.uk

You would then need to set up an SMTP forwarder to forward all emails sent to projectname@nhs.net and forward it to projectname@trac-nhs.co.uk.

Tractivity will then be able to import the forwarded emails from the email account that we have created on our end.

If you would like to use this option, please contact support@tractivity.co.uk and let us know the following:

• That the client wants to use the Shared Mailbox feature and you also want us to create an email account on the client's behalf that you can forward the emails to.
• The name of the project(s) in Tractivity that the client would like to use Shared Mailbox for (since the client could have multiple projects and each project can have it's own Shared Mailbox)
• The email address(es) of the account(s) that you will be forwarding email from (e.g. projectname1@nhs.net, projectname2@nhs.net).

Questions

Q. I have a question - how can I reach out to Tractivity support?

If you have any further questions, please contact us at support@tractivity.co.uk along with as much detail as possible to help us answer your query.