Configuring Your SendGrid Account to Capture Inbound Emails

What will this do for my organization?

The SendGrid integration allows a Site Stacker installation to capture inbound emails sent to a configured email address and save them as activities on the CRM record. Any files attached to the email will be stored as files on the CRM record.

Notes on functionality:

• Every email sent from Site Stacker will have a Reply-To address, which will be used to capture replies and save them on the CRM record that received the email initially.
• CRM Admin users can add the email address in the BCC: field in a new outbound email. If the email address they are sending to exists in a CRM record, the email content will be added as an activity to that record. If it does not belong to a record, a new record will be created in CRM, and the email will be added to the activity of the new record.
• If the admin user emails to multiple users, a single activity record will be saved for the admin user, containing all the users he sent the email to. Whenever a user replies, it will create an individual activity from there on.
• If for some reason (e.g. the user didn't reply to the Reply-To email address), the email a user sent wasn't stored as an activity, the admin has the option to store that email on the user's CRM record manually. This can be done by sending an email to the inbound address, and specifying the user's email address (as is or as RFC 822) in the email's subject. This will not trigger an email to the user but will save the Activity in Site Stacker. In this scenario, the email and subject can be specified using the following syntax in the Subject field of the email:
  [email protected] Subject Line
  
  Other valid syntaxes are:
  [email protected], Re: Subject Line
  [email protected] #Re: Subject Line
  Joe Doe [email protected] Re: Subject Line
  "Joe Doe" [email protected] Re: Subject Line

Every installation needs to have a unique domain that is authenticated in SendGrid. Below are the detailed steps to configure this.

Please note: this feature is available in Site Stacker version 2.30.x and later.

Domain Authentication

To use Inbound Parse, you must first authenticate your domain. Authenticating your domain proves you're allowed to receive email there.

To get started with this process, log into your SendGrid account > Settings > Sender Authentication. Click on the 'Get Started' button within the 'Authenticate Your Domain' box to the right-hand side.

You will then be asked a couple of questions like: Which Domain Name Server (DNS) host do you use? Select your DNS host from the dropdown. For the question of: "Would you also like to brand the links for this domain?", you can answer that as No. Click next when you are finished.

Next, you will need to add the domain you will be sending from. Note: This will be the domain of sendgrid.yourorganization.domain. Example: sendgrid.sitestacker.com

After that, you will be asked to Install DNS Records based on the DNS host that you chose in the previous steps. You will need to install those records to complete the authentication process.

Now that you have authenticated your domain, it is time to verify that it is working! Click on the checkbox of "I've added these records" in the bottom right-hand side of your screen and then click 'Verify'. A message should pop up saying that "It Worked!" along with a message stating which domain was verified.

Inbound Parse

Before setting this up you will want to ensure you have a subdomain setup at your DNS that will be used to receive the inbound mail. This subdomain must be part of the top level domain used in authenticating your site from the sending domain at SendGrid.

The Site Stacker URL you will need to configure is:

[installation-url]/p/SystemMessages/SystemMessages/sendgridInbound

You can find this option within your SendGrid account at Settings > Inbound Parse

When setting the host for the inbound parse ensure that you use the subdomain you designated for inbound mail at your DNS.

Example: https://myinstallationname.org/p/SystemMessages/SystemMessages/sendgridInbound

The domain also needs an MX record that points to mx.sendgrid.net. If you are going to use subdomains, then every subdomain needs its own MX record.

Example: myorg.sendgrid.sitestacker.com

Once the MX records are configured, you can use this tool to check:

Configure the domain in Site Stacker

To configure this within your SiteStacker installation, you will need to be logged in and head over to the Settings component and choose the SendGrid integration. Here, you will need to input the inbound domain like our example above: sendgrid.sitestacker.com (using your own organization domain of course)

Important: The domain here needs its own MX record and you will want to make sure the activity type "Email" is configured in your CRM component > Configuration > Activity tab (see screenshot below).