Email | Email Domain Xplan Set up Guide (SPF)

An email sent from XPLAN is actually sent from IRESS mail servers having your ‘From’ email address. Recipient email servers now often cross-check the sender’s domain (e.g. iress.com.au) with your domain (e.g. financialplanning.com.au) and can flag the email as spam or even reject the email if the two domains don’t match.

Many applications like XPLAN legitimately send emails this way but are now increasingly getting mixed up as spam.

To help fix this issue, you can ask your IT Specialists to create/update a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record on your domain adding these IRESS IP Addresses.

203.32.185.0/24

103.3.196.0/24

Iress has also created domain name system (DNS) records that you can include in your domain instead, but the Iress public IP ranges detailed above can also still be used:

The new global SPF records are:

spf-au.iress.com

spf-za.iress.com

spf-sg.iress.com

spf-uk.iress.com

There are a few advantages to this.

• Better control over the records in the event we migrate our simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP) services to the Iress cloud platform (ICP). We could amend the DNS records above and not impact your outbound mail from products. including Xplan.

• Better security; the DNS SPF records only contain single IP's vs. IP ranges.

Here is an example of what you will need to add to your domain:

v=spf1 include:spf-au.iress.com include:spf.protection.outlook.com -all.

To see if your domain already has an SPF record, go to https://www.kitterman.com/spf/validate.html?, 

Enter your domain in the domain name field under 'Does my domain already have an SPF record? What is it? Is it valid?' and then click 'Get SPF Record' (if any)'

From the results page you will see whether (1) you have a SPF Record, (2)what it is, and (3) if it is valid.

1. If you do not have an SPF Record, this will need to be added by your 'DNS Record' by your email administrator and needs to include the IP Address ranges specified above.

2.If there is an SPF Record, and its is valid, but does not contain IRESS' IP Address ranges;

Copy the SPF record and paste it into the Notepad app (not mandatory) but best practice.

Then add the two IP Address ranges to the existing record.

Click  and then add the altered SPF record into the SPF Record field under 'Is this SPF record valid - syntactically correct?' and click Check SPF record

If there are no other issues with your SPF record, your record should pass the validation test, provide the altered SPF record to your email administrator to add. If it does not pass validation test check SPF record entered, if IP address ranges are correct and there are no spaces, see part 3.

3. If the results say SPF record is invalid, Kitterman will give you details as to what is causing the error, this may be a typo or missing character elsewhere in the SPF record (eg. missing '=' in 'vspf1)

If the above does not work, please have your IT try the below:

• Add iress.com.au to your SPF record as an a record mechanism (i.e. a:iress.com.au)
• If that doesn't work, try changing the always directive on the end to a soft fail (i.e. ~all instead of -all). If this is a hard fail for any particular reason feel free to change it back but the soft fail will at least allow these to be received, just potentially with a spam warning to the receiver.

More Information

An SPF record is a type of Domain Name Service (DNS) record that identifies which mail servers are permitted to send email on behalf of your domain.

The general purpose of an SPF record is to prevent spammers from sending messages with forged From Addresses at your domain. Recipients automatically refer to the SPF record to determine whether a message purporting to be from your domain comes from an authorized mail server.

After adding the IP Addresses above the recipient’s email service will be able to determine that your message from XPLAN is authorised.

Unfortunately, this is something that we cannot do on your behalf, please contact your IT Specialist managing your domain name records to make the change.

Published by Garrett White