Emails and invitations

This guidance explains how risr/advance sends email notifications and how you can configure these emails to come from your own organisation's email domain. Using a custom email address ensures organisational consistency and branding, as well as reliable email delivery. Your organisation logo will always be displayed within the body of the email if you have provided one.

How email notifications work

By default, all emails sent from risr/advance are sent from [e-mail] (with regional variations for AU and CA). We use industry-standard security measures (like DKIM, SPF, and DMARC) to ensure these emails are delivered securely and are not marked as spam.

More specifically, the following measures are in place to ensure optimal email security and deliverability:

• Reliable: We use a world-class sending service (Amazon SES) to ensure emails reach your users' inboxes.
• Secure: We always use an encrypted connection (TLS) when communicating with your email server to protect the contents of the email.
• Authentic: Our emails are digitally signed (DKIM) to prove they genuinely come from us, protecting your users from phishing attempts.
• Universal: Emails are sent in a format that works with virtually all modern email clients on desktop and mobile devices.

While this default (e.g. [e-mail]) setup works well, sending emails from your own domain (e.g., [e-mail]) is recommended. To do so, your IT department will need to grant us permission to send emails on your behalf by adding a few records to your domain's settings.

How to set it up

Here is the end-to-end process. Following these steps carefully will ensure a smooth and quick setup.

• Please decide on the email address you would like users to see in the “From” line of invitation and notification emails.
  • Recommendation: We suggest that you use a simple, clear email address that your users will recognise, such as [e-mail] or [e-mail].
  • This inbox does not need to function – it only needs to be the address you want displayed to recipients.
• To ensure compliance with DMARC/SPF alignment, we also need you to create a subdomain dedicated to mail delivery.
  • Example: mail.yourorganisation.com (the word mail can be replaced with another word of your choice)
  • This domain will not be visible to your users. It is used “behind the scenes” in the email envelope to meet security requirements.
• Please confirm with us the following
  1. The display name you want users to see (e.g. “Your Organisation ePortfolio”)
  2. The sending/from address (From Step 1)
  3. The MAIL FROM subdomain you want to use (From Step 2)
• Once you confirm the above details, we will provide you with the exact DNS records required to verify and authorise sending:
  • 3 CNAME records (for DKIM signing)
  • 1 TXT record (for SPF)
  • 1 MX record (for the MAIL FROM subdomain)
• Use the email template below to forward these DNS records to your internal IT team. They must add them exactly as provided to your domain’s DNS settings.
• Once your IT confirms the records are in place, let us know. We will check the DNS propagation, complete the verification, and enable the custom sending address.

Email template for your IT Team

Please edit the parts of the email template <formatted in this way> to be specific to your organisation and region.

Subject: DNS Records Required for Custom Email Sender on risr/advance Platform

Hi team,

We are needing to configure our risr/advance eportfolio platform to send email notifications from our own domain, <[ourorganisation.com]>.

To ensure these emails are authenticated correctly and avoid being marked as spam, the risr/ team requires several DNS records to be added. It is critical that these records are created exactly as provided, without altering any names or prefixes.

The risr/ support team will provide us with a specific list of records, which will include:

• DKIM records (CNAME): 3 unique CNAME entries to authenticate our chosen “From” address domain.
• Custom MAIL FROM Domain (MX record): 1 MX record to handle sending and feedback for the MAIL FROM subdomain (e.g. <[mail.ourorganisation.com]>).
• SPF Record (TXT): A TXT record containing include:amazonses.com to be added to the SPF record for the MAIL FROM subdomain.

We will forward the exact records for you to implement as soon as we receive them. These steps are essential for the emails to be fully DMARC compliant and will not interfere with existing mail services if entered correctly.

Thanks!