How to set up your SPF/DKIM Record

You may have noticed an alert on your dashboard about setting you an "SPF Record" or "DKIM". In short: both of these functions will help make sure your members receive both auto emails and emails you manually send out.

Here is a helpful article that outlines what DKIM and SPF Records are and why they are used. Please give that a read through, as it may answer your initial questions. 

 If you choose not to set up either record, then you may select this option in your Main Settings:

Checking this box indicates you want all of your CSAware email set from an "@csaware.com" email. An replies to that email will get automatically forwarded to you. This is the easiest option! However, if you want to have email sent from your vendor domain, here are some step by step instructions for setting up your DNS records:

(Note: although we are setting up a DKIM record, you will actually be creating something called a CNAME instead, which is just a pointer to our DKIM record we have pre-made for you.)

The CSAware team can help you get this set up! Here are the step by step instructions:

1.  Go to wherever you host your farm website (the part after the ‘@’ symbol in your email) 
2.  Look for settings, and then DNS (Domain Name System) records
3. First, create the SPF record. Look to see if you have one already, they start with ‘v=spf1’
   1. If you already have one, edit it so that in the middle of the record you have this: include:cwmx.localharvest.org
   2. If you don’t already have one, create a new TXT record and enter this: v=spf1 include:cwmx.localharvest.org ~all
4. Next, look for the CNAME record area. Sometimes there will be a unique section for CNAME, other times you can just create a record with 'type' CNAME
5. There will be a field called 'hostname' or maybe just 'name'. Enter this there:
   • cw._domainkey
     • if it complains, or doesn't like that entry, you might want to try this instead:
       • cw._domainkey.[farmhost] (for example cw._domainkey.happyfarm.com)
6.  There will be a field called 'data' or maybe it will be called 'to.' There should really be only 2 different text input fields and this will be the second one. Put this there, substituting your farm host for [farmhost]:
   • cw.[farmhost].dkim.csaware.com

• SO FOR EXAMPLE, if the email you're setting up is this: joe@happyfarm.com, then you want to enter this:
  • cw.happyfarm.com.dkim.csaware.com
• You can mostly ignore the other fields if they exist. If there's a TTL field, you can leave as default or maybe set it to 1 hour is fine.

LAST and very important step: Email joe@localharvest.org letting him know when you are done. Joe will need to finalize a few things in the server to "turn it on" and check your work to be sure it is set up correctly. And as always, feel free to reach out to your account manager for further assistance.