Email on Appian Cloud

Overview

Customers of Appian Cloud can use email to enable communication between their Appian Cloud environments and users. This page explains the email features that are available to Appian Cloud customers and how they can be used.

Outbound email

Appian Cloud provides email-as-a-service for all Appian Cloud environments by default. An Appian Cloud environment will send an email for system notifications or when a designer configures a process model to send an email.

Custom email senders

Appian supports sending emails with a custom address in the From: header. See Configuring Custom Email Senders page for more information.

IP addresses

Appian Cloud email-as-a-service IP addresses are published in up-to-date Sender Policy Framework (SPF) records. These IP addresses are subject to change.

Deliverability

If Appian detects that an a environment is sending mail that affects the deliverability of Appian Cloud emails, such as spam or a large volume of messages to undeliverable addresses, a limit may be applied to that environment. If this happens to your environment, you will be notified via a support case.

Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM)

DKIM signing is configured for all Appian-owned domains, i.e. appiancloud.com or appiancloud.us, by default.

If you have a custom non-Appian domain, you can configure DKIM signing in Appian Cloud from the Administration Console.

Inbound email

Appian Cloud email-as-a-service also provides a capability to receive mail. This supports sending an email message to a process.

Sending an email message to a process in Appian Cloud

In Appian Cloud it is possible to start new process instances using an email trigger sent to a specific process model. Appian Cloud environments have been configured to accept incoming email for running processes as well as for specific events.

When an email message is sent to a process model, the message is also received by all running instances of that process model for which there's an active receive message event configured to listen for email messages.

Email messages sent to Appian Cloud processes must use one of the following formats:

Target a specific process instance

1
process<id>@subdomain.appiancloud.com

Target a specific event

1
event<eventId>@subdomain.appiancloud.com

Target all process instances of a specific process model or start a new instance of a process model

1
2
processmodel<id>@subdomain.appiancloud.com
processmodeluuid<model_uuid>@subdomain.appiancloud.com

Email capabilities for Private Access sites

Due to email's unique reliance on DNS records associated with a site, private access sites (i.e. inbound access enabled only through VPN or PrivateLink) have fewer email capabilities than publicly available sites. Email on private access sites can be enabled using the following options:

1. Configure DNS records for your Appian Cloud site domain that point to Appian Cloud mail servers. Appian Support can assist with this.
2. Configure your own custom SMTP server (as outlined below).

With either of the above options you'll be able to utilize custom email senders on your private access cloud site.

Use your own (custom) email service

If the Appian Cloud email-as-a-service does not meet your requirements, you may use your own custom email service for outbound email, inbound email, or both. A secure, network connection to your email service is required. This may require creating a VPN integration. Information on the requirements for configuring a VPN integration tunnel can be found on the Self Service VPN page.

Once a secure, network connection is available, create a support case on Appian Community to have your environment configured to use your custom email service.

Feedback