Verify your email domains

Your organization's email domains tell Part3 who works at your company. Anyone with an email at one of your domains joins your organization as a Member. Everyone else is an external collaborator.

To use a domain for single sign-on (SSO), you first need to verify it. Verifying proves your organization owns the domain. You do it by adding a TXT record at your DNS provider, the service where your domain's settings live (for example, GoDaddy, Cloudflare, Network Solutions or Amazon Route 53).

In this article we'll cover the following:

• Who can manage email domains
• Add an email domain
• Verify a domain
• Domain statuses
• Remove an email domain
• Good to know
• Troubleshooting

Who can manage email domains

• Organization admins and IT admins can add, verify and remove email domains.
  • See The IT admin role.
• Everyone else in your organization can see the list of domains, but can't change it.

Add an email domain

Step 1: Go to your Organization, select Settings, then select the Email domains tab.

Step 2: Select Add domain.

Step 3: Enter the domain, for example acme.com. You don't need the @. Then select Add.

The domain appears in the table with the status Not verified.

Verify a domain

Step 1: On the Email domains tab, select Verify domain next to the domain.

Step 2: Part3 shows the TXT record to add, under Add this TXT record at your DNS provider:

Select Copy next to the host and the value to copy them exactly.

Step 3: In another tab, sign in to your DNS provider and add a new TXT record with that host and value. If you don't manage your company's DNS, send the record to whoever does.

Step 4: Come back to Part3. You don't need to stay on the page. Part3 keeps checking for the record on its own, and the domain shows Verifying… (its button reads Verifying domain) in the meantime.

• For the first hour, Part3 checks every few minutes. After that, it checks about once an hour.
• To check right away, select Check now.
• Part3 keeps checking for 72 hours. If it still hasn't found the record by then, it stops. See Troubleshooting below.

Step 5: When Part3 finds the record, the domain's status changes to Verified. If you're on the page, you'll see "acme.com is verified. It can now carry sign-on."

Domain statuses

The Billing column shows In use for every domain, because every domain decides who joins your organization as a paid Member.

Remove an email domain

Step 1: On the Email domains tab, select Remove next to the domain.

Step 2: Select Remove to confirm.

People with an email at that domain will no longer join your organization as Members. They can still be added as external collaborators. Anyone already in your organization stays in it.

Your organization always keeps at least one email domain, so the last one can't be removed.

Good to know

• Verification lasts. Once a domain is verified, it stays verified, even if the TXT record is later removed. We recommend leaving the record in place anyway.
• One record per organization. The value is the same each time you select Verify domain or Try again, so you only ever need to add it once.
• Each domain is verified on its own. If your company uses more than one domain (for example, acme.com and acme.ca), add and verify each one.
• A domain belongs to one organization for single sign-on. If another Part3 organization already uses your domain for single sign-on, you won't be able to turn it on for yours. Contact support@part3.io.

Troubleshooting

Q: It says "The record was not found."

Part3 looked for a TXT record at _part3-verify   on your domain and found nothing. Check that:

• The record type is TXT, not CNAME or another type.
• The host is exactly _part3-verify  , with the underscore.
• Your provider didn't add your domain twice. If the record ended up at _part3-verify.acme.com.acme.com  , change the host to just _part3-verify  .
• Enough time has passed. Most DNS changes show up within an hour, but some providers take longer.

Then select Try again.

Q: It says "The record holds a different value."

Part3 found a TXT record at _part3-verify  , but its value doesn't match. Copy the value from Part3 again and replace the one at your DNS provider. Check for extra spaces or quotation marks, then select Try again.

Q: It says "Part3 stopped checking."

Part3 didn't find the record within 72 hours. Add the record (or fix it, using the tips above), then select Try again. Part3 starts checking for another 72 hours.

Q: It says "Public email domains cannot be added."

Personal email services like gmail.com, outlook.com, hotmail.com and yahoo.com can't be used as an organization's domain. Add your company's own domain instead.

Q: It says "This domain is already added."

The domain is already in your list. Look for it in the table.

Q: I don't see Verify domain or the Status column.

Only organization admins and IT admins can verify domains, and only once single sign-on is enabled for your organization. Contact support@part3.io to have it enabled.