RightNow CX email Deployment

This answer highlights some of the benefits of the new mail system that RightNow deployed in Q3 2008, and actions that RightNow Technologies customers should be aware of as a result.

New Features and Benefits
There are many dynamic challenges faced in today’s email deliverability landscape,  and the new email platform will help meet the growing demands of you our customers.

• With the capacity of delivering millions of messages per hour,  we will increase the scalability of our outbound mail infrastructure.
• Configurable and dynamic rate limiting allows RightNow Hosting to monitor and fine tune delivery behavior on an ISP basis.
• Email for all customers using a RightNow-supplied “From:” address will be DomainKeys and DKIM signed without further customer action. This will allow ISPs such as Yahoo, AOL, and Gmail to authenticate all incoming email for your incident responses. Additionally, customers that wish to brand their mail “From:” address with their own domain can submit an incident and get their email DK/DKIM signed as well.
• Provides enhanced bounce handling, analysis and categorization, allowing Hosting to more quickly respond to the rapidly changing email delivery landscape.
• Allows flexibility and scalability for future demands in email deliverability.

Transition plan from the legacy email platform
Beginning Friday November 21st 2008 during planned maintenance, Hosting will initiate the process of transitioning all customers onto the new email platform.  This will be a phased transition that will last over a period of several weeks to allow the new IP address to slowly build a good reputation.  We will be monitoring the impact during this period until all customers have been moved.

A few things to expect during the transition

1. There should be no interruptions in email delivery.
2. The IP addresses that we are sending from will change and may require you adding them to your own internal whitelist. See recommendations below.
3. All customers’ email currently using RightNow-assigned email addresses will immediately be signed with DK and DKIM authentication.
4. Branded mail “From:” addresses such as, xxx@yourdomain.com should publish SPF, SenderID, DK, and DKIM in their DNS for proper email authentication to take place.

Recommended actions

1. If you are currently white listing RightNow’s mail server IPs, add the following addresses to your white list.  If not currently white listing, please consider doing so, especially if  sending email to domains you own.
   
   • mailgwca03.rightnowtech.com – 216.136.162.123
   • mailgwca04.rightnowtech.com – 216.136.162.124
   • mailgwca05.rightnowtech.com – 216.136.162.125
   • mailgwnj03.rightnowtech.com  – 63.240.103.58
   • mailgwnj04.rightnowtech.com  – 63.240.103.59
   • mailgwnj05.rightnowtech.com  – 63.240.103.60
   • mailgwuk03.rightnowtech.com – 213.105.192.188
   • mailgwuk04.rightnowtech.com – 213.105.192.189
   • mailgwuk05.rightnowtech.com – 213.105.192.190
   • rntnj1.rnmk.com - 63.240.103.1
   • rntuk140.rnmk.com - 213.105.192.140
   • rntca65.rnmk.com - 216.136.162.65
     
     Note: if you are using a dedicated IP address for your marketing mailings, you will also need to add that domain and IP address to the whitelist as well
     
     
     
2. If you are using branded domains for your email address, publish both SPF and DK/DKIM records in your domain’s DNS.
   • For SPF and SenderID publishing please refer to Answer ID 2489: Sender-ID and SPF considerations with RightNow sitesfor information your IT department will need to correctly complete this task.
   • For DK/DKIM publishing you will need to submit an incident to RightNow Customer Support as documented in Answer ID 2701: DomainKeys and DKIM email authentication configurationand follow the instructions therein.

RightNow Technologies is working hard to make this transition as smooth and seamless as possible so you can take advantage of the benefits of the new mail infrastructure.

If you have any questions, concerns, or should any issues arise, please contact RightNow Technologies Customer Support.

If your organization has purchased a dedicated IP address, your IP address will not be listed in this answer.  If you need to know the dedicated IP address please submit an incident through the Ask A Question page.

For additional information, see the following standards and documentation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DomainKeys_Identified_Mail  Summary of DKIM

http://www.openspf.org/    Summary of SPF