Creating receipt rules console walkthrough

This section will walk you through creating and defining receipt rules using the Amazon SES console. The key points to understanding how receipt rules work are:

• Rule sets contain an ordered set of receipt rules; Receipt rules contain an ordered set of actions.

• Receipt rules tell Amazon SES how to handle incoming mail by executing an ordered list of actions you specify.

• This ordered list of actions can optionally be made dependant on first matching a recipient condition; if not specified, the actions will be applied to all identities that belong to your verified domains.

• Receipt rules are created and defined in a container called a rule set - while you can create multiple rule sets, only one can be active at a time.

• Receipt rules within the active rule set are executed in the order that you specify.

• Before you create your receipt rules, you must first create a rule set to contain them.

Optionally, you can use the CreateReceiptRuleSet API to create an empty receipt rule set, as described in the Amazon Simple Email Service API Reference. Then, you can use the Amazon SES console or the CreateReceiptRule API to add receipt rules to it.

Before proceeding with the walkthrough, please ensure you have met all of the necessary prerequisites that are required in order to use recipient-based email receiving. Also

Prerequisites

The following prerequisites must be met before proceeding with setting up recipient based email control using receipt rules:

1. Ensure your endpoint is in an AWS Region where Amazon SES supports email receiving. The Email Receiving endpoints table in the AWS General Reference lists the email receiving endpoints for all of the AWS Regions where SES supports email receiving.

2. You first need to create and verify a domain identity in Amazon SES.

3. Next, you need to specify which mail servers can accept mail for your domain by publishing an MX record to your domain's DNS settings. (The MX record should refer to the Amazon SES endpoint that receives mail for the AWS Region where you use Amazon SES.)

4. Lastly, you need to give Amazon SES permission to access other AWS resources in order to execute receipt rule actions.

Creating rule sets and receipt rules

This walkthrough begins by first creating a rule set to contain your rules and progresses into the Create rule wizard to create, define, and order your receipt rules. The wizard contains four screens to define rule settings, add recipient conditions, add actions, and to review all your settings.

To create a rule set and receipt rules using the console

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon SES console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ses/.

2. In the navigation pane, under Configuration, choose Email Receiving.

   Note

   Email receiving will not be visible in the left navigation pane of the SES console if your account is in an AWS Region where SES doesn't support email receiving. See the first item listed in Prerequisites.

3. Under the Receipt rule sets tab in the Email receiving pane, choose Create rule set.

4. Enter an unique name for your rule set and choose Create rule set.

5. Choose Create rule and this will open the Create rule wizard.

6. On the Define rule settings page, under Receipt rule details, enter a Rule name.

7. For Status, only clear the Enabled checkbox if you don't want Amazon SES to run this rule after creation; otherwise, leave this option selected.

8. (Optional) Under Security and protection options, for Transport Layer Security (TLS), select Required if you want Amazon SES to reject incoming messages that aren't sent over a secure connection.

9. (Optional) For Spam and virus scanning, select Enabled if you want Amazon SES to scan incoming messages for spam and viruses.

10. To proceed to the next step, choose Next.

11. (Optional) On the Add recipient conditions page, use the following procedure to specify one or more recipient conditions. You can have a maximum of 100 recipient conditions per receipt rule.

    1. Under Recipient conditions, choose Add new recipient condition to specify the receiving email address or domain to which you want to apply the receipt rule. The following table uses the address [e-mail] to show how to specify recipient conditions.

       If you want to...	Specify the following recipient...	Notes
       Match a specific email address.	[e-mail]	Also matches variations of the address that contain labels (such as [e-mail] and [e-mail]). However, if you specify an address that contains a label, only that specific address is matched.
       Match all addresses within a domain, but not those within its subdomains.	example.com
       Match all addresses within a specific subdomain, but not those within the parent domain.	subdomain.example.com
       Match all addresses within all subdomains, but not those within the parent domain.	.example.com	Note the period (.) before the domain name.
       Match all addresses within a domain, and all addresses within all of its subdomains.	example.com .example.com	Create two separate recipients: one with the domain name, and one with a period followed by the domain name.
       Match all recipients in all verified domains	[None]	Leave the recipient field blank.

       Important

       If multiple Amazon SES accounts receive email on a common domain (for example, if multiple teams in the same company each have separate Amazon SES accounts), Amazon SES processes all matching receipt rules simultaneously for each of those accounts. This behavior may result in a situation where one account generates a bounce, while another account accepts the email.

       We recommend that you coordinate with other teams in your organization that use Amazon SES to ensure that each account uses unique receipt rules, and that those rules do not overlap. In these situations, it is best to configure your receipt rules to use only email addresses or subdomains that are unique to your group or team.

    2. Repeat this step for each recipient condition you want to add. When you finish adding recipient conditions, choose Next.

12. On the Add actions page, use the following procedure to add one or more actions to the receipt rule.

    1. Open the Add new action menu, and then choose one of the following types of actions:

       • Add header - This action adds a custom header to the received email.

       • Return bounce response - This action rejects the received email by returning a bounce response to the sender.

       • Invoke Lambda function - This action calls your code via an AWS Lambda function.

       • Deliver to S3 bucket - This action stores the received email in an Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket.

       • Publish to Amazon SNS topic - This action publishes the complete email to an Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) topic.

       • Stop rule set - This action terminates the evaluation of the receipt rule set.

       • Integrate with Amazon WorkMail - This action integrates with Amazon WorkMail.

       For more information about each of these actions, see Action options.

    2. Repeat this step for each action that you want to define. If you have multiple actions defined, you can reorder them by using the up/down arrows within the action containers. Choose Next to proceed to the Review page.

13. On the Review page, review the settings and actions of the rule. If you need to make changes, choose the Edit option, or use the navigation section on the left side of the page to go directly to the step that contains the content you want to edit. You can optionally make changes to the order of the actions listed in the Actions table of the Review page by using the up/down arrows in the Reorder column.

14. When you’re ready to proceed, choose Create rule.

15. On the confirmation page for the rule set, choose Set as active if you want to enforce the rule set immediately.

Rule modifications after creation

After you've created a rule set, you can edit both the rule set and the receipt rules it contains. Not only can they be edited, but there's also the option to duplicate either the rule set or its rules so that new ones can be created quickly. The following list shows the available modifications for the rule set and the receipt rules:

• Rule set is listed with its name, status and creation date. Modification options for the rule set are:

  • Set as active/inactive toggle button will toggle between setting the status.

  • Duplicate button will copy the rule set. You will be prompted to supply a unique name.

  • Delete button will delete the rule set. You will be prompted to confirm this irreversible action.

• Receipt rules are listed with their name, status, security, and order. Modification options for the receipt rules are:

  • Up/down arrows to reorder rule execution within the rule set.

  • Duplicate button will create a copy of the selected rule. You will be prompted to supply a unique name.

  • Edit button will open the selected rule so that any of its parameters such as rule settings, recipient conditions, and actions can be edited.

  • Delete button will delete the selected rule. You will be prompted to confirm this irreversible action.

  • Create rule button will allow you to create and add a new rule to the current rule set.