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Whitelist IP Address - When and Why?
+2I've set a default 'From Address' for all of our institution's surveys for all users. This default 'From Address' goes to an inbox that our department uses only for a shared team calendar, and the 'From Address' can be changed to whatever our users decide. Every once in a while, we have issues with surveys not being sent, and after digging into it, I'm typically advised to get an IP address range whitelisted. So, after an email to our IT staff, it's done and problem solved, but does anyone have any insight as to why this step is needed, and better yet, is there a prescribed schedule to have this done? Once a year? Every other Month? Should I ask for my IT team to check on this prior to every large survey project? Is the 'From Address' and the IP address range connected - does the change in 'From Address' trigger the need for the IP address range to be whitelisted?
Best answer by MichelleC
@JakeW I asked one of the guys on our Messaging team (ie. Email). He said IP addresses can become "unwhitelisted" if you have system changes. Also SPF records (which sounds like what you have set up) have a limit to the number of IP address entries. I'm wondering if the IP address from the originator is what is catching? The From Address is fine, but if it's catching the IP address from the person that is actually sending it, that might be the issue? Because you have so many people spread out across a wide-range of IPs, maybe it's too much for the SPF to manage?
He suggested talking with your IT staff and seeing if they have a department policy on the whitelist, but it sounds like you may have already done that.
+10@jakew, are you guys sending all your mail via the noreply@qemailserver or have you set up a custom SPF or SMTP? We here at MSU are just using the noreply@qemailserver address, but our messaging team whitelisted that address itself so it doesn't get marked as spam. I wonder if there's a way to do the same thing with that email address so you don't have to deal with individual IP addresses? I know you guys are pretty spread out across the state...
+2@MichelleC For all of our users, the default from is a generic departmental email address instead of the noreply@qemailserver... I've asked for it to be whitelisted about a half dozen times now, and I'm just not sure why the original whitelist doesn't 'stick'. I curious if I just need to put it on my calendar to request it to be whitelisted at some regular interval... Any ideas?
+10@JakeW I asked one of the guys on our Messaging team (ie. Email). He said IP addresses can become "unwhitelisted" if you have system changes. Also SPF records (which sounds like what you have set up) have a limit to the number of IP address entries. I'm wondering if the IP address from the originator is what is catching? The From Address is fine, but if it's catching the IP address from the person that is actually sending it, that might be the issue? Because you have so many people spread out across a wide-range of IPs, maybe it's too much for the SPF to manage?
He suggested talking with your IT staff and seeing if they have a department policy on the whitelist, but it sounds like you may have already done that.
NDSU does not whitelist no matter how much I ask. But we did change the from email address and that seem to help. We also change the address because one time we were blacklisted because of someone else so we wanted to make sure that we were not blacklisted again. When someone tells us that they did not get survey we will ask them to look in their spam folder and it normally there.
+7> @MichelleC said:
> @JakeW how did you set the default From Address?
Hi all - you might find this support page helpful as well!
https://www.qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/distributions-module/email-distribution/using-a-custom-from-address/
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