MarcomCentral EU Cloud Host Migration: August 24, 2023
Start Migration:
9 AM Pacific Standard Time / 5 PM British Standard Time / 6 PM Central European Summer Time
Complete Migration:
9 PM Pacific Standard Time / 5 AM British Standard Time / 6 AM Central European Summer time
On August 24, 2023, we will be migrating our primary European cloud hosting provider to Amazon Web Services (AWS). This change is part of MarcomCentral’s continued technology investment in ensuring improved performance and uptime.
This will cause a planned outage during the migration window affecting access to the MarcomCentral platform. This planned outage will be an estimated 12 hours.
No action needs to be taken by your organization unless, you fit the requirement below:
If your organization is using a spoofed “sender email” for system email notifications, to allow them through internal email filters you must take action:
Update SPF record to continue receiving “spoofed” emails from the MarcomCentral system – you can do this now.
Within the MarcomCentral portal admin tool, your organization may have created a “sender email” for system email notifications. This allows MarcomCentral to send emails that look like they are coming from your organization at yourcompany.com – versus being sent from MarcomCentral. This is called “spoofing.”
For some clients, their IT team blocks spoofed emails because they can be used for phishing. Therefore, these clients may have whitelisted Marcom’s IP address to allow the “spoofed” emails through their corporate email filters.
ACTION: Instead of using MarcomCentral’s IP address to allow the “spoofed” emails, your organization’s IT team will use SPF. It is _spf.app.pti.com
If you are experiencing issues with emails after applying the recommended changes above to your environment, the following are some troubleshooting tips that can be considered.
Check spam/junk folders
Add MarcomCentral to Safe Senders
Add MarcomCentral to whitelist in spam filters.
Whitelisting in Barracuda.
https://support.knowbe4.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000126387-Whitelisting-in-Barracuda
Whitelisting in O365
There are too many different providers to list, yet the basic concept is to add MarcomCentral’s sender IP to any whitelist, or filter exemption list your anti-spam provider may have. Check your junk mail/spam folder to see if the emails from MarcomCentral are being caught. If they are being caught by an email client, add MarcomCentral to safe senders or bypass lists of said email client.
Our sending IP has little or no positive sender reputation. Sometimes no reputation is the same as a bad reputation in the spam filtering world. As the sent email tally grows and the percentage of accepted emails grows, the reputation will improve and there will be less need to adjust spam settings.
Custom Domain Redirects to MarcomCentral Servers:
Update domain name redirects if they are pointing to Marcom’s IP addresses – you can do this now
Your organization may have custom redirects from your website (yourcompany.com/brandportal) or domain name (companybrandportal.com) that redirect your users to your MarcomCentral portal. If those redirects are pointing to our IP address, you need to establish a DNS redirect to your portal URL instead.
ACTION: Establish the DNS redirect to https://eu.marcomcentral.app.pti.com/{accountname}/{portalname}versus the MarcomCentral IP address. This DNS setting will future proof your redirect going forward.
You can find your portal URL from within the Admin Tool (Portal Info > Portal Information)
Custom Domain Name Redirects and iFrames:
Update custom domain name redirects if they are pointing to Marcom’s IP addresses and using iFrames – you can do this now
Note: MarcomCentral does not recommend using iFrames. Many web browsers have deemed iFrames as a security risk because of their potential for illicit use. MarcomCentral recommends using a DNS redirect instead – as outlined in #3 above.
If your organization is using a custom domain name (mycompanybrand.com) to redirect to a page hosting an iFrame linked to MarcomCentral’s IP address, you will need to redirect to your MarcomCentral portal URL instead.
The reason some clients use iFrames and a custom domain is to have a custom URL of their choice in the address bar for the entire duration of the portal user’s session. For example, a user goes to MyCompanyBrand.com and it appears in the address bar the entire time the user is navigating around the portal. This is done through iframing the portal at MyCompanyBrand.com
ACTION: If your organization decides to continue using iFraming, the iFrame will need a DNS redirect to https://eu.marcomcentral.app.pti.com/{accountname}/{portalname} versus the MarcomCentral IP address. You can find your portal URL from within the Admin Tool (Portal Info > Portal Information)
If you have questions about the above migration, please contact support.