Configuring Custom Email Senders

Overview

The Send E-Mail Smart Service can send emails using a customer sender as long as an email server has been set up.

To configure an email with a custom sender:

1. Select Custom Sender on the From field of the setup tab. Two new fields will appear below the From field.
2. Enter a value for Sender Display Name. This value will be the name of the sender.

3. Enter a value for Sender Email. This value will be the sender's email.

   

4. Configure the rest of the Send E-Mail Smart Service as needed. When a process kicks off this activity, the recipient would see an e-mail similar to the one below:

   

Email spoofing and email headers

Email spoofing is the sending of emails with a forged sender address. Because Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) does not provide an authentication method, malicious actors can spoof email headers to mislead the recipient about the sender of an email.

Some email providers and clients have built-in email security that detects and notifies users of potential spam and email spoofing. One way this is done is by analyzing email headers. This can be an effective security measure, but it can also lead to legitimate emails being flagged due to improper configuration.

Appian's Custom Sender option configures the email headers in a way that makes it clear that the email owner is having a message sent on their behalf, rather than sending the message themselves. This is a best practice that prevents email spoofing and keeps the emails from being flagged as suspicious.

This leverages a custom property called conf.mailhandler.ntf_sndr_addr.

Email Header Key	Value	Example
From	Sender Display Name <Sender Email>	Jane Doe jane.doe@email.com
Sender	conf.mailhandler.ntf_sndr_addr	admin@company.appiancloud.com
Return-Path	conf.mailhandler.ntf_sndr_addr	admin@company.appiancloud.com

The configuration above will result in an email that looks something like this:

If the email needs to look like it was sent directly by the email owner, you will need to get a system administrator involved. You will need to host your own mail server, which can be a fairly complex process. The mail server must be configured such that the domain of the conf.mailhandler.ntf_sndr_addr property matches the domain of the Sender Email. For our example above, this could be done by setting the conf.mailhandler.ntf_sndr_addr value to admin@email.com. This doesn't change the headers that are sent, just the way that the email client interprets them.

To learn more about configuring your own mail server in Appian Cloud, see KB-2100 Overview of custom SMTP server setup process in Appian Cloud. For self-managed installations, see the Mail Server Setup page.

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