Communicating with your clients is an activity you do all day, every day, and emailing is an important part of that. To send emails from Animana directly, you must complete the email settings. If your practice has its own domain name and you would like to send emails from Animana using that domain, this article will explain how to set up your outgoing email settings in Animana.
If you do not want to send emails from your own domain or you do not have your own domain, this article does not apply to your situation. Please find the appropriate article in the related articles section.
Before you start
You need to have administrator permission to be able to setup outgoing email. Permissions can be adjusted by practice administrators in Settings > General Settings > Role Management.
Step-by-step instructions
- Go to Settings > General Settings > Outgoing Email.
- In the Domains section, click Add domain.
- In the “Domain name” field, enter your practice’s domain, using the format “example.com”. Do not include “http://” or “www.”, just the domain name itself.
This is box titleTip: We recommend using a subdomain. Why this matters. - Click Save.
- You will now see a popup with DNS records information. Each row in the table needs to be configured in your practice domain’s DNS records. See the related articles for instructions.
- Once you have added all the DNS records to your domain, you must wait until they have updated. Note that this process may take up to 72 hours.
- Should you want to add another domain to send emails from, click Add domain and follow steps 3-6 above.
- In the “Delivery notifications email” section, enter the email address for bounce and spam complaint notifications. Why this matters. Make sure to add an email address that belongs to one of your domains added in step 3.
- Click Save.
You can now safely navigate away from this page, while waiting for the validation.
Tip: add a reminder in your diary to check the status in 72 hours (3 days from now). How do I check the status?
More about this
Why would I want to receive notifications about bounces and spam complaints?
A “bounce” means an email you sent could not be delivered. For example, because the client mistyped their email address, their mailbox is full, or their mail server rejected it.
A “spam complaint” means a client marked one of your emails as spam.
These “Delivery notifications” are usually the only way you will find out that a client never received an appointment reminder or an invoice, so use an email address that someone in the practice actually monitors. Repeated bounces and spam complaints also damage your domain’s reputation, which makes it more likely that your future emails land in clients’ spam folders.
Why should I use a subdomain?
We recommend using a subdomain. Instead of your main domain (example.com), consider a subdomain dedicated to Animana, such as mail.example.com or vet.example.com.
This keeps your Animana email sending separate from the rest of your domain. If something goes wrong with email sent from Animana, like a run of bounces, or a spam complaint, this would only affects your subdomain, and not your practice website, your day-to-day mailboxes, or any other service running on your main domain.
Can I send emails while I’m waiting for the validation?
Yes. Nothing stops working while you wait.
Until your domain shows as validated, Animana continues to send your emails exactly as it did before, from the default Animana domain (@veterinarymail.com), with the reply-to address defined by the “from” address in your general settings. Your clients will not notice any difference.
Only once the status changes to Validated will Animana start sending emails from your own practice domain.
How do I check the validation status of a domain?
- Go to Settings > General Settings > Outgoing Email.
- In the Domains section you will see the status in the second column.
There are three possible statuses:
| Status | What it means | What you need to do |
|---|---|---|
| Validated | Animana has found all the required DNS records. Your practice domain is ready to use. | Nothing. Emails are now automatically sent from your own practice domain, and will appear in the corresponding areas of Animana. |
| Pending | Animana has not yet found all the required DNS records. This is normal in the first 72 hours after you add them. | Wait. If it is still Pending after 72 hours, see the troubleshooting steps below. |
| Failed | Validation did not succeed. | Hover over the status to see the reason, then follow the troubleshooting steps below. |
What do I do if validation fails or stays pending?
- Find out why. Hover over the Failed status to see a tooltip explaining the reason.
- Check your DNS records. The most common causes are a record that was not saved, a typo in a record value, or a record entered on the wrong domain or subdomain. Compare each record in your domain’s DNS settings against the records shown in Animana, character for character. If your website or domain is managed by an external party, this is the point to involve them.
- Correct the records at your domain name provider.
- Regenerate the DNS records in Animana. After a failed validation you need to generate a fresh set of DNS records: open the domain in Settings > General Settings > Outgoing Email and choose to regenerate the records. Add the new records to your domain, replacing the previous ones.
- Wait again. DNS changes can take up to 72 hours to take effect. Check the status once more after that.
Throughout all of this, your emails keep going out via the Animana domain, so client communication is never interrupted.
The terminology explained
When explaining how to set up outgoing e-mail, a lot of terminology is used. Below is a list of terms and their explanation.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Domain | Your address on the internet, such as example.com. If you imagine the internet is a big city with millions of houses (websites). Each house has its own address (domain name). |
| Subdomain | A separate section of your domain, written in front of it. For example mail.example.com. Think of it as a separate entrance to the same building, with its own nameplate. |
| Domain name provider | The company you rent your domain name from, and where you manage its settings. Like the estate agent that sold you the address (domain name). They don't build the house (website), but they control who the address belongs to. |
| Website provider | The company that hosts and runs your website. The builder rather than the estate agent. Often, but not always, the same company as your domain name provider. |
| DNS records | DNS records, or Domain Name System records, are settings at your domain name provider that tell the internet where to send traffic and email for your domain. Like the signposts at the entrance to your street. |
| CNAME record | A CNAME record, or Canonical Name record, is a DNS record that points one name at another name. A signpost saying "this way to…". |
| MX record | MX records, or Mail Exchange records, are DNS records that say which mail server receives email for your domain. A note on the signpost saying where to deliver the post. |
| SPF record | An SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record is a DNS record listing which mail servers are allowed to send email using your domain. It is what stops someone else from sending email that looks like it came from you, and what tells the receiving side that Animana is allowed to send on your behalf. |
| DMARC record | DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) is a DNS record that tells email providers what to do with messages that only pretend to come from your domain: reject them, hold them as spam, or let them through and report back. It's like a note telling the mail carrier how to handle letters that aren't really from your house. You can only ever post one such note. Otherwise, the mail carrier gets confused and just ignores both notes and lets all the letters through. |
| Bounce | An email that could not be delivered and came back. Usually a wrong or full mailbox, or a receiving server that refused it. |
| Spam complaint | A recipient marked your email as spam in their mail program. Their provider reports this back, and too many complaints make it harder for all your emails to reach clients' inboxes. |
How do I delete a domain?
Deleting a domain name can be done as follows.
Note that when you delete a domain, you can no longer send emails from it. If you delete the only domain added, recipients will receive emails from the default domain (e.g. info@veterinarymail.com) with a reply-to address defined by the “from” address in the general settings in Animana.
- Go to Settings > General Settings > Outgoing Email.
- In the Domains section, you will see the list of configured domains. Click the recycle bin behind the domain you wish to delete.
- You will be asked to confirm. If you’re certain you want to delete the domain, click Delete.