KB-2010 How to view SPF records for Appian Cloud

Purpose

Appian Cloud publishes up-to-date SPF records that can be used with email exchangers in order to validate that emails are originating from Appian. This article shows how to use the command line to view the latest SPF record for an Appian Cloud site.

Instructions

Open Command Prompt on Windows, or your preferred terminal on *nix.
Type nslookup -type=txt a space, and then the domain/host name. e.g. nslookup -type=txt forum.appian.com.
If an SPF record exists, the result would be similar to: v=spf1 ip4:54.209.19.9 ip4:54.208.15.54 ip4:54.209.19.148 ip4:54.209.20.112 ~all.
If there are no results or if there is no v=spf1 property, then there is a problem retrieving the record for the domain, or one does not exist.
Follow your system specific documentation to update your system with the values specified in the SPF record.

How to Read the Results

v=spf1 indicates that the record is of type SPFv1.
ip4:207.171.160.0/19 lists the IP network range of servers allowed to send emails for the domain.
An SPF record may also include a "redirect" in the record. This tells the receiving server to check the SPF record of google.com instead of gmail.com.
An include in the record tells the receiving server to also consider the IP addresses listed in the SPF record of another domain to make a match for which servers can send email.

Affected Versions

This article applies to all versions of Appian Cloud.

Last Reviewed: October 2019