For Emails Going to Customers or Suppliers

When using Equilibrium (EQ), you have the option of sending Purchase Orders, Proposals, Contracts, and other types of documents via email to your Customers and Suppliers. EQ does this by sending the email using your employee’s email address as the originator’s address in the email “from” field. This way when they reply to the email, it goes to your employee.

Most Customers and Suppliers receive emails from EQ without issue. The first time you email a Customer or Supplier, they might need to check their “spam” folder to make sure the email didn’t go there. If it did, they can mark it as “not spam” and it will go to their regular inbox from then on.

The Problem

Some of your Customer’s and Supplier’s email systems might reject emails coming from EQ so that they never arrive. This is because our servers are not valid “senders” of email for your domain, and their spam filters might block them.

To correct this, our server IP address needs to be added to your email system as a valid sender so it doesn’t get blocked. The directions on how to do this are below and are intended for the technical person who manages your company’s DNS and email server settings.

TECHNICAL EXPLANATION:

Add a SPF record to your DNS Zone File or modify an existing SPF record to include our server’s IP address as a valid originator.

Your DNS host will usually be the same company you purchased and renew your domain URL from. For example, if you bought your domain name from GoDaddy, then GoDaddy is also your DNS Zone File host.

When adding a SPF record, we are requesting that you include our server’s IP addresses: 69.167.138.75/32 in a new or existing SPF record. To learn more about what SPF records do and how they work, please visit this helpful guide: https://www.godaddy.com/help/what-is-an-spf-record-24605

Below is what will need to be entered into a valid SPF record entry in a DNS Zone File that includes our 2 server IP addresses.

v=spf1 ip4:69.167.138.75/32 ~all

It is important to not remove any existing IP addresses if you already have a SPF record entry. This solution will allow all emails that originate from within EQ to be accepted by your Customers and Suppliers.

Note there are 2 options here. 

Option 1) If you have an existing SPF record, you will want to add this text to the record by placing a space between existing entries, and pasting this text before the ending of the existing record’s ~

ip4:69.167.138.75/32

Option 2) If you do not have any existing SPF records, you will want to create a new DNS entry that is of the TXT type, with this exact text:

v=spf1 ip4:69.167.138.75/32 ~all

It is important to note that they may still be marked as spam for existing Customers and Suppliers due to past emails without the SPF record having been received prior. With the addition of our server’s IP into a new or existing SPF record, existing Customers and Suppliers will be able to move the next new email out of the “spam” folder, mark it as “not spam”, and receive future emails in the default Inbox.

For Technical Help: If you already have an existing SPF record and need to combine mutiple entries, click here for a reference article on how to do that.

To check and see if your SPF record is setup correctly, you can use this free tool. https://mxtoolbox.com

You should see something like this if it’s setup correctly (but with just the IP number from above):

Alternate Solution – Customer or Supplier “Whitelists” the EQ Server IP

If you do not have the ability to make the change above, then this alternate solution can be used. This solution will need to be done by your Customer or Supplier in their email system.

The technical person who manages the email server at your Customer or Supplier can “whitelist” the EQ IP Addresses so emails from that IP will not get blocked.

If you have a Customer or Supplier where emails are not coming through at all, send them the following message to clear the way for EQ emails.

“Dear Customer/Supplier, your email server is blocking emails coming from our application. If you could whitelist the following IP address it should solve the problem so our emails will come through.”
IP Address: 69.167.138.75

For Emails Going to Employees from the EQ Workflow

When an email is sent from the EQ Workflow it’s not sent from your email domain. Those emails are sent from “notifications@breakfront.com”. So if the Workflow emails are not getting to your employees, you’ll want to whitelist notifications@breakfront.com in your email system. These methods should solve all email issues coming out of EQ.