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March 14th, 2024 Deadline: How to Update and Verify DNS Records

Jennifer Trower Updated by Jennifer Trower

Read Time: 5 mins

If you are setting up an Email domain for the first time in Sonar, please refer to this article

Google and Yahoo recently introduced new requirements to combat spam, which will take effect on March 14th 2024. As a result, to continue sending emails through your Sonar Instance as normal, you will have to update your DKIM records and enact a DMARC policy on any sending domains that are currently in use. 

If you have not updated these records by March 15th, 2024, messages will appear to be coming from the domain “mandrill.com” instead of your specified domain name for the sender of the email.

Previously, Mandrill has only required two records, a DKIM TXT record and an SPF TXT Record. Moving forward, Mandrill requires 5 Records:

  • 2 CNAME records (DKIM)
  • 1 DMARC TXT record
  • 1 DKIM TXT record 
  • 1 SPF record 

Creating the Newly Required Records

These steps should be performed within your DNS provider, if you are unsure how to make these changes or run into issues, please contact your DNS provider for more information. 

Make sure that when you create these new records you replace yourdomain.com with the actual domain name you are creating these records for.

Be aware that some DNS providers will automatically add yourdomain.com in the name or value fields, make sure you continue through to the verification stage to ensure the records have been created correctly.

DKIM:

Create and save 2 CNAME records in your DNS:

  1. Name: mte1._domainkey.yourdomain.com
    1. Value: dkim1.mandrillapp.com (note the lack of yourdomain.com in the value)
  2. Name: mte2._domainkey.yourdomain.com
    1. Value: dkim2.mandrillapp.com (note the lack of yourdomain.com in the value)

DMARC:

Create and save a TXT record in your DNS:

  1. Host: _dmarc.yourdomain.com
  2. Value: v=DMARC1; p=none

Inspecting Existing Records

Now that the 3 new DNS records have been created, take a quick look to ensure that the two existing records are intact.

DKIM:

Ensure you have a TXT record which matches:

  1. Name/Host: mandrill._domainkey
  2. Value:
    v=DKIM1\; k=rsa\; p=MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQCrLHiExVd55zd/IQ/J/mRwSRMAocV/hMB3jXwaHH36d9NaVynQFYV8NaWi69c1veUtRzGt7yAioXqLj7Z4TeEUoOLgrKsn8YnckGs9i3B3tVFB+Ch/4mPhXWiNfNdynHWBcPcbJ8kjEQ2U8y78dHZj1YeRXXVvWob2OaKynO8/lQIDAQAB;
    Depending on your provider, you may need to escape the semicolons, in which case it should look like the sample below.
    1. Value:
v=DKIM1\; k=rsa\; p=MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQCrLHiExVd55zd/IQ/J/mRwSRMAocV/hMB3jXwaHH36d9NaVynQFYV8NaWi69c1veUtRzGt7yAioXqLj7Z4TeEUoOLgrKsn8YnckGs9i3B3tVFB+Ch/4mPhXWiNfNdynHWBcPcbJ8kjEQ2U8y78dHZj1YeRXXVvWob2OaKynO8/lQIDAQAB\;

SPF:

Ensure you have a TXT record which matches:

  1. Name/Host: (Should match your domain)
  2. Value: v=spf1 include:spf.mandrillapp.com ?all
  3.  If you have multiple SPF records, it should look like this
    1. Value: v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com include:spf.mandrillapp.com ?all

Verifying DNS Records

Now that we have all the required DNS records in place, we can use a DNS record troubleshooting tool, such as MXToolbox, to verify your new DNS records are working properly.

DKIM

Navigate to https://mxtoolbox.com/dkim.aspx, then follow the steps below.

  1. Enter the Domain Name you are inspecting
  2. Set the Selector to mte1
  3. Click DKIM Lookup.
    1. You are looking for the following response, this will indicate the mte1 record has been created successfully.
  4. Repeat this process for mte2 by replacing the selector and running the lookup a second time. You are looking for the same result as the previous test.
  5. Repeat this process once more for the Selector: mandrill
    1. You are looking for this response:
      v=DKIM1; k=rsa; p=MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQCrLHiExVd55zd/IQ/J/mRwSRMAocV/hMB3jXwaHH36d9NaVynQFYV8NaWi69c1veUtRzGt7yAioXqLj7Z4TeEUoOLgrKsn8YnckGs9i3B3tVFB+Ch/4mPhXWiNfNdynHWBcPcbJ8kjEQ2U8y78dHZj1YeRXXVvWob2OaKynO8/lQIDAQAB;
    A failure response for any of the above tests would return an error message stating “No DKIM Record Found” or you are missing one or more of the three tags/values pictured above.

DMARC

Navigate to https://mxtoolbox.com/dmarc.aspx, then follow the steps below.

  1. Enter the domain name
  2. Click DMARC Lookup.
    1. A successful response with the following values: v=DMARC1; p=none indicates everything is set up correctly.
    1. A failure response would return an error message stating “No DMARC Record Found” or the values are not returning v=DMARC1; p=none. 

SPF

Navigate to https://mxtoolbox.com/spf.aspx, then follow the below steps.

  1. Enter the Domain Name you are inspecting
  2. Click SPF Record Lookup.
    1. You should receive back: v=spf1 include:spf.mandrillapp.com ?all 
      1. or if you have multiple records: v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com include:spf.mandrillapp.com ?all

Final steps

Once you have verified all the new records are in place and functioning, the last step is to click the “Verify” button in your Sonar Instance:

  • For your V2 instance, you will navigate to Settings > Communication Tools > Email Domains, the click the Verify button.
  • For your V1 instance, you will navigate to Settings > Communications > Outbound Domains, then click the three dot icon and select Verify Records.

You can now perform a test email via a ticket reply to an internal mailbox to ensure delivery is successful and is displaying the correct “From:” domain name. 

If after completing the above steps, you are still seeing emails from the instance arrive using the @mandrill.com domain instead of your own, feel free to get in touch with our Support Team for assistance.

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