emails - allowing b4 to send from your addresses

About SPF

SPF stands for Sender Policy Framework.

It is a globally supported system that helps to protect domain names and their owners from being spoofed by spammers. It does this by allowing a domain name owner to publish a policy which declares where emails can originate from. It doesn't prevent spoofed emails from being sent, but it allows incoming email providers to verify the source of an email and take appropriate action.

For more information see the section called “How does it work?” on the authSMTP website.

Update your mail server’s SPF Record

Your IT Department or provider must update your mail server SPF record to include authsmtp.com before "-all" in your existing SPF record.

A 'typical' SPF record will be similar to this example:
"v=spf1 a mx include:authsmtp.com -all"

Verify the update was successful by going to https://mxtoolbox.com/spf.aspx, entering your Domain Name and selecting SPF Record Lookup. When your Domain details are displayed, check for entries in the "Type" and "Value" columns that indicate Type "include" and Value "authsmtp.com".

Authorize b4 to send from your email addresses

All email addresses under your domain that you wish b4 products to send emails FROM on your behalf must be authorized by you in our mail server. You provide your authorization to us through authSMTP.

When you provide us with any address you wish us to send from, we enter that address into our account at authSMTP, which triggers an email TO that same email address. The email advises whoever monitors the email address you provided that steve@b4checkin.com is requesting your permission for authSMTP to send from the address.

Here is an example of the request.

To provide your permission, follow the click-through instructions in the request.

Let your b4 Project Manager know once you have approved each authSMTP request for each email address you will be using so that we can configure your FROM addresses and notifications in your installation.

If your workplace uses GMail addresses or Google workstations ...

1. Two-factor authentication (2FA) should be used on your GMail account, which requires a special pairing password be generated for 3rd party senders.
   
   This avoids any requirement for you to share your actual GMail credentials with us. Is this already enabled? If you need assistance setting this up, please contact your Project Manager at b4.
   

2. Are your GMail accounts setup as business accounts?  Non-business accounts can only send ~20 emails an hour or 500 a day.  Going over this limit regularly can lead to GMail temporarily suspending the account. Registering the address with GMail as a business email enables upwards of 2000 emails a day.
   
   Note that each recipient is counted as a send; so, one email sent to a guest that is also BCC’d to you would count as 2 sends.

Generate an App password from your GMail account for b4

Once 2FA is set up on your GMail account, you must generate an App password to provide to us, as follows:

1. Go to your Google Account.
   

2. Select Security.
   

3. Under "Signing in to Google," select App Passwords. You may need to sign in. If you don’t have this option, it might be because:
   

   1. 2-Step Verification is not set up for your account.

   2. 2-Step Verification is only set up for security keys.

   3. Your account is through work, school, or other organization.

   4. You turned on Advanced Protection.
      

4. At the bottom, choose Select app and choose 'Mail' then 'Select device' and choose 'Other' then provide the name "B4Email" and finally select 'Generate'.
   

5. Please use https://password.link/ and copy the password generated (the one with the yellow background) and paste it in the "secret" text box,  click Encrypt and create link.
   

6. Email that link to ryan@b4checkin.com and he will complete the setup.
   
   Steps 5 & 6 keep your unique code as secure as possible and will "self-destruct" once we have retrieved the password.