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Tractivity Email Setup Guide (Technical Documentation)

This article is for the IT systems administrator who has been asked by our client to set up the email configuration necessary for Tractivity (Stakeholder relationship management software) to send emails on behalf of the client organisation.

In this article

Important:

Our client should have given you the following information along with the URL to this guide:

  1. The Email address that the client wishes to send emails FROM
    (e.g. engagement@organisation.co.uk)
  2. Whether or not they intend to use the "Shared Mailbox" feature in Tractivity

If the client hasn't given you this information, please request it from them before continuing with this article.

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

Tractivity is a stakeholder relationship management (SRM) tool and is a web application. As part of it's feature set, it enables our client to send various types of email to stakeholders (e.g. newsletters / event invitations / surveys etc).

Ideally, those emails need to show the "FROM" address as originating from our client organisation's email address (E.g.client@organisation.co.uk) so that the email recipients trust the email's origin and legitimacy.

This guide will help you configure what is needed in order for the client to use Tractivity effectively.

The 4 configuration options for SENDING email from Tractivity

Due to the fact that many of our clients are large organisations, we realise that it's not always possible to set up the email configuration in the same way. Therefore we offer four options, starting from the most recommended and preferred option, to the least preferred.

Please choose ONE of the following 4 options. Then, if your client is using our "Shared Mailbox" feature, please configure that too by following the instructions further down this article.

Option 1 - Setting up an SPF record (Recommended)

In order for Tractivity to send email on behalf of the client organisation's domain name, the recommended option is for you to add Tractivity to your domain's SPF record.

Important If the client needs to send emails with the "FROM" address as client@organisation.co.uk, the SPF record MUST be added to the organisation.co.uk root domain DNS record 

Not possible to use the root domain? If it is not possible to add an SPF to the root domain due to the organisation's policies, then you could create a subdomain such as srm.organisation.co.uk and then create an SPF record for that new subdomain. (Note: srm is an abbreviation for Stakeholder Relationship Management which is why we have suggested it could be a good subdomain to use).

If using a subdomain, please let the client know that the "FROM" email address will be in the format: email@subdomain.organisation.co.uk and ensure they understand the reason for this before proceeding. 

You may also want to set up an email forwarder so that email@subdomain.organisation.co.uk will be automatically forwarded to email@organisation.co.uk so that the client can receive replies to any emails that are sent out from Tractivity.

How to set up the SPF record

To set up SPF correctly, you will need to edit your existing SPF record OR create a new SPF record if the domain name doesn't already have one.

If you already have an existing SPF record

Simply include a reference to Tractivity by adding the following string to the existing SPF record:

include:spf.tractivity.co.uk

Too many existing SPF entries? If you already have many entries in your domain's SPF record, you can overcome the limitation by following the steps in this article. 

If you don't have an existing SPF record

Simply add a new TXT record to the domain DNS:

v=spf1 mx include:spf.tractivity.co.uk -all

Validate the SPF record entry

After you have set up the SPF record, verify that the SPF is showing correctly without errors at https://www.dmarcanalyzer.com/spf/checker/.

Do you need to set up DKIM? (Necessary if you have a DMARC policy)

If you also need to setup DKIM, then please let us know at support@tractivity.co.uk and we will create a DKIM key for you to add to your domain's DNS.

Important You must create the SPF record before requesting the DKIM key, as we will need to test the SPF record is working before generating a key.

Option 2 - Using your SMTP server to send email on behalf of Tractivity

An alternative to using SPF records is for Tractivity to use our client organisation's SMTP email server that is already configured to send outbound email from email@organisation.co.uk (where email@organisation.co.uk is the domain that our client would like for the "FROM" address in emails sent from Tractivity).

If it's possible for Tractivity to gain SMTP access to the organisation's email server, we would need to be supplied with the following information:

  • Project Name–which client project is the SMTP server being used for?
  • Server IP address/domain
  • Connection Port
  • Username
  • Password

Once this information is provided, Tractivity will configure the client's system and run some tests to ensure all is working as intended.

Please ensure that you/the client are aware of the following if using this option: 

  1. Tractivity has the ability to send thousands of emails and the email server needs to have the capacity to accommodate this. All email sends are controlled by users within Tractivity, so if there are any capacity limits, the users will need to be made aware.
  2. As the emails are being sent by the client organisation's email server, Tractivity will not have full email logs, so all log investigations into a specific email will need to be directed to the client's IT department.
 

Option 3 - We set up a mailbox on OUR email server to send emails from "clientname@tracmail.co.uk"

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

This will mean that all outbound emails that are sent from Tractivity will have a "FROM" email address as clientname@tracmail.co.uk. 

We can also set the "REPLY TO" email address to be client@organisation.co.uk so that email replies can still be received by the client.

Disadvantage with this approach:

  1. There will be a small annual charge of £300+VAT per mailbox. This charge is to cover the setup, maintenance, hosting and anti-spam service charges that are associated with managing a mailbox. Please ensure that our client is aware of this and agreeable to the fee.

Option 4 - We use a 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 client's preferred email address (e.g. email@organisation.co.uk) 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 "email@organisation.co.uk".

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:
    CleanShot 2022-09-06 at 14.54.43@2x
    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

Important:

This section is only required if the 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 your client had an email account email@organisation.com, 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:

CleanShot 2022-09-07 at 12.44.19@2x

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

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

Shared Mailbox Option 1 – Connect directly to client email account using POP3 (for clients not using Microsoft 365)

So that Tractivity can connect to the client's designated email account, you must provide us with the following information:

  • POP3 Server Address (IP address or domain)
  • POP3 Email Address (the one you are using for your project)
  • POP3 Username
  • POP3 Password

Please Note. Tractivity will only ever read emails from the email account. No emails will be sent, edited or deleted from this account under any circumstances.

Shared Mailbox Option 2 - Tractivity will connect directly to client email account using POP3 with oAuth (for Microsoft 365 email accounts)

So that Tractivity can connect to the client's designated email account, you may need to grant access to the Tractivity website application on Azure.

Depending on your IT policy, you may be able to grant the permission prior to the user requesting it via oAuth, or only after they have requested the permission when they first try to authenticate with the Microsoft 365 server using oAuth.

In any case, here are some details that will help you to ensure that Tractivity has the permissions needed for the application to work correctly.

Tractivity Application
Application ID : f0bfaa5b-d514-4269-8d71-f97b0d555572
Permissions required:
- openid
- email
- offline_access
- POP.AccessAsUser.All

Please Note. Tractivity will only ever read emails from the email account. No emails will be sent, edited or deleted from this account under any circumstances.

Shared Mailbox Option 3 – 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 clientname-clientproject@tracmail.co.uk

You would then need to set up an SMTP forwarder to forward all emails sent to projectname@organisation.co.uk and forward it to clientname-clientproject@tracmail.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@organisation.co.uk, projectname2@organisation.co.uk).

Disadvantage with this approach:

  1. There will be a small annual charge of £300+VAT per mailbox. This charge is to cover the setup, maintenance, hosting and anti-spam service charges that are associated with managing a mailbox. Please ensure that our client is aware of this and agreeable to the fee.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Does Tractivity need a CNAME record / custom domain for the client to access Tractivity?

A. No - Tractivity uses it's own domain for accessing the platform. You only need to set up the email.

Q. I have another 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.