Adding a domain - Amazon WorkMail

Adding a domain

You can add up to 100 domains to your Amazon WorkMail organization. When you add a new domain, an Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) sending authorization policy is automatically added to the domain identity policy. This provides Amazon WorkMail with access to all Amazon SES sending actions for your domain and allows you to redirect email to your domain. You can also redirect email to external domains.

Note

As a best practice, you should add aliases for and to all your domains. You can create distribution groups for these aliases if you want specific users in your organization to receive mail sent to these aliases.

When you configure your Amazon WorkMail organization with a custom domain, remember the following about your domain's DNS records:
  • For MX and autodiscover CNAME records, we recommend setting the Time to Live (TTL) value to 3600. Reducing the TTL ensures that your mail servers don't use outdated or invalid MX records after you update those records or migrate your mailboxes.

  • After you create your users and distribution groups, and then successfully migrate your mailboxes, you should update the MX record to start forwarding emails to Amazon WorkMail. Updates to DNS records can take up to 48 hours to process.

  • Some DNS providers automatically append domain names to the ends of DNS records. Adding a record that already contains the domain name, such as _amazonses.example.com, might result in the duplication of the domain name, resulting in _amazonses.example.com.example.com. To avoid duplicating the domain name in the record name, add a period to the end of the domain name in the DNS record. This indicates to your DNS provider that the record name is fully qualified and no longer relative to the domain name. It also prevents the DNS provider from appending an additional domain name.

  • Copied record names include the domain name. Depending on which DNS service you use, the domain name might already be added to the domain's DNS record.

  • After you create a DNS record, choose the refresh icon on the Amazon WorkMail console to see the verification status and record value. For more information about verifying domains, see Verifying domains.

  • We recommend that you configure your domain as the MAIL FROM domain. To enable AutoDiscover for iOS devices, you must configure your domain as the MAIL FROM domain. You can see the status of your MAIL FROM domain in the Enhance deliverability section of the console. For more information, see Configuring a custom MAIL FROM domain.

To add a domain
  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon WorkMail console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/workmail/.

  2. If necessary, change the AWS Region. In the bar at the top of the console window, open the Select a Region list and choose a Region. For more information, see Regions and endpoints in the Amazon Web Services General Reference.

  3. In the navigation pane, choose Organizations, and then choose the name of the organization that you want to add a domain to.

  4. In the navigation pane, choose Domains, and then choose Add domain.

  5. On the Add domain screen, enter a domain name. Domain names can contain only Basic Latin (ASCII) characters.

    Note

    If you have a domain that is managed in an Amazon Route 53 public hosted zone, you can choose it from the dropdown menu that appears as you enter a domain name.

  6. Choose Add domain.

    A page appears and lists the DNS records for the new domain. The page groups the records into the following sections:

    • Domain ownership

    • WorkMail configuration

    • Improved security

    • Improved email delivery

    Each of these sections contains one or more DNS records, and each record displays a Status value. The following list shows the records and their available status values.

    TXT ownership

    Verified – Record resolved and verified.

    Pending – Record not verified yet.

    Failed – Unable to verify ownership. Record mismatched or unreachable.

    MX WorkMail configuration

    Verified – Record resolved and verified.

    Missing – Unable to resolve record.

    Inconsistent – Value does not match expected record.

    AutoDiscover

    Verified – Record resolved and verified.

    Missing – Unable to resolve record.

    Inconsistent – Value does not match expected record.

    Note

    The AutoDiscover verification process also checks for correct AutoDiscover setup. The process verifies the configuration settings for each phase. A green check mark appears next to Verified in the Status column when verification finishes. You can hover over Verified and see which of the phases was verified by the process. For more information about the AutoDiscover phases, see Enabling AutoDiscover to configure endpoints.

    DKIM CNAME

    Verified – Record resolved and verified.

    Pending – Record not verified yet

    Failed – Unable to verify ownership. Record mismatched or unreachable.

    For more information about DKIM signing, see Authenticating email with DKIM in Amazon SES in the Amazon Simple Email Service Developer Guide.

    SPF TXT

    Verified – Record resolved and verified.

    Missing – Unable to resolve record.

    Inconsistent – Value does not match expected record.

    For more information about SPF verification, see Authenticating email with SPF.

    DMARC TXT

    Verified – Record resolved and verified.

    Missing – Unable to resolve record.

    Inconsistent – Value does not match expected record

    For more information about DMARC records in Amazon WorkMail, see Complying with DMARC using Amazon SES in the Amazon Simple Email Service Developer Guide.

    TXT MAIL FROM domain

    Verified – Record resolved and verified.

    Pending – Record not verified yet.

    Failed – Unable to verify ownership. Record mismatched or unreachable.

    MX MAIL FROM domain

    Verified – Record resolved and verified.

    Missing – Unable to resolve record.

    Inconsistent – Value does not match expected record.

  7. For the next step, choose the appropriate action based on the DNS provider you use.

    If you use a Route 53 domain
    • At the top of the page, choose Update all in Route 53.

    If you use another DNS provider
    • Copy the records and paste them into your DNS provider. You can copy the records in bulk or one at a time. To copy records in bulk, choose Copy all. That creates a file zone that you can import into your DNS provider. To copy records one at a time, choose the overlapping squares next to the record name, and then paste each one into your DNS provider.

  8. Choose the refresh icon update the Status for each record. This verifies domain ownership and proper configuration of your domain with Amazon WorkMail.