Email Settings: Senders, Reply-To, Footer, and Sandbox Redirects

On This Page

• Where to Find It
• The Settings
• Change the Address Emails Come From
• The Footer
• Sandbox Email
• Saving, Reverting, and Leaving
• Validation and Errors
• Related

The Email Settings page controls the default email identity Rhythm uses for your organization. These defaults include the sender name and address, reply-to address, footer, postal address, and, in a sandbox, the redirect addresses that receive email instead of real recipients. Templates in each application can still set their own sender or reply-to for specific messages, so these settings provide the fallback values. For details on how Rhythm builds and sends a message, see How Rhythm Sends Email.

Where to Find It

Go to System & Security › Email Settings. The page is headed Manage Email Settings. From top to bottom, you see Email Defaults, Sandbox Mode Options in a sandbox only, Default Email Footer, and Email Addresses, followed by Save Changes and Cancel.

Prerequisites

• You can sign in to the Console for your organization and use the System & Security settings.
• You can open the mailbox for each sender address you plan to add, or you can ask its owner to click a verification link.

The Settings

Setting	Options	Default	Effect
Default From Name: (Email Defaults)	Text, required	Empty	Members see this sender name unless a template uses its own. If you leave the name empty, Rhythm sends mail as Rhythm Software
Default Reply To: (Email Defaults)	An email address, or empty	Empty	Replies go to this address when a template has neither its own reply-to nor its own sender address
Physical Address: (Email Defaults)	A postal address	Empty	This is your organization's postal address. It matches Address: under System & Security › Other Settings. Rhythm uses it to meet mass-email compliance requirements; the people who receive your email do not see it
Sandbox redirect addresses (Sandbox Mode Options)	A list of email addresses	One empty row	In a sandbox, Rhythm sends every email to these addresses instead of the real recipients
Footer (Default Email Footer)	Formatted text (HTML)	Empty	Rhythm adds this footer to the end of every email your organization sends, from every application
Default From Email Address: (Email Addresses)	One email address	Empty	Every email is sent from this address unless a template uses its own. If you leave the address empty, mail is sent from notifications@rhythmsoftware.com
Additional Email Addresses: (Email Addresses)	A list of email addresses	One empty row	These are other sender addresses. The screen notes: The emails you list here can be used in confirmation emails through Rhythm.

Tip

When you type or paste Physical Address:, choose the matching suggestion from the dropdown instead of clicking elsewhere on the page. Selecting the suggestion fills in the postal code and the rest of the structured address, which helps you avoid the validation errors described later in this article.

After you add and verify a sender address here, either as Default From Email Address: or in Additional Email Addresses:, it becomes available in that application's email templates. For example, you can choose it in a From Email field on a confirmation email. You cannot add a new sender address from inside a template, so add and verify it here first. Applications do not all handle additional addresses the same way yet. Membership supports the full behavior, including the matching option to skip its own confirmation email, and other applications are being brought in line over time.

Which sender and reply-to a message uses. Rhythm chooses the sender in this order: the template's sender, your default sender, then Rhythm's default sender. Rhythm chooses the reply-to differently. It uses the template's reply-to first. If the template does not have one, replies go to the template's own sender address when it has one, then to Default Reply To:, and finally to the sender. For example, if an events template sends from events@acme.org without its own reply-to, replies go to events@acme.org, not to your default reply-to.

Tip

Avoid commas in Default From Name:. Rhythm currently replaces the first comma with the word undefined, so Acme, Inc. is sent as Acmeundefined Inc.

These settings are global. Every application uses your default sender name, address, and reply-to unless its own template overrides them. For example, the directory's direct-message feature always sends with your defaults; there is no separate sender setting just for it.

Tip

There is no single switch that turns off all outbound email from your live account at once. To stop one kind of message, turn it off where that process is configured. Some console processes, such as Membership and Events, have their own send confirmation email option, which suppresses only that process's messages. To stop every notification, you need to find and uncheck each one separately.

Change the Address Emails Come From

1. Go to System & Security › Email Settings.
2. In the Email Addresses card, enter the new address in Default From Email Address:. To keep the old address available, move it to Additional Email Addresses: because the default field holds only one address. To add a sender address without replacing your default one, type it into Additional Email Addresses: instead and leave Default From Email Address: as it is.
3. Press Verify Email Addresses. Rhythm sends a verification email with a link to each listed address that has not been verified yet.
4. Open each mailbox and click the link. Check the spam folder if you do not see the message.
5. Return to the screen and press Verify Email Addresses again. When all addresses are verified, you see Congratulations! All emails have been verified. You may now save these settings.
6. Press Save Changes.

Result

After you save, Settings updated successfully. appears, and you stay on the screen. New messages use the new address within about ten seconds, but messages sent during those few seconds may still show the old one.

Verify Email Addresses sends verification emails, but it does not save the form. The screen does not show which addresses are already verified. Rhythm will not save the form while any listed sender address is unverified. Each address needs verification only once. If every message fails after you change the sender, the new address was not verified.

If a verification email does not arrive, check the spam folder for the mailbox you just added, not a different mailbox you use every day. A problem with the sender address or sending domain can also stop the message. If your organization changed domains or mail providers recently, see Set Up Your Domains. When outbound email is rejected or bounced and the reason does not point somewhere else, checking whether your sender address is verified here is a good first step.

Some recipient mail systems treat automated confirmations and notices as spam, especially from a sender they have not seen before. If a member says they never received a message that Rhythm shows as sent, ask them, or their organization's IT team, to allow mail from your sender address or domain. Rhythm sends from a shared, changing pool of servers, so give recipients your configured sender addresses and domain to allow, not a fixed IP address. If several people at the same organization have the same problem, the block is more likely on their side than in any one contact record.

To check whether a specific automated email reached someone, open their contact record and review the Emails tab. It shows whether that message was opened. Rhythm does not provide an overall delivery or open-rate report across all your email, only this per-contact view.

The Footer

Type the footer in the editor under Default Email Footer. Rhythm adds it to every message, for every message type, and a single message cannot skip it.

• Placeholders, such as a contact's first name in double curly braces, are not filled in. They appear exactly as typed.
• Images you add are uploaded as public images.
• If the footer contains only spaces, Rhythm removes it when you save.
• The message copy staff can read after a message is sent does not include the footer. To see the footer as members see it, send yourself a test message.
• A text style dropdown at the top of the editor applies one of Rhythm's predefined styles. It applies the style to text you have already selected or, if you use it before you start typing, to the whole footer. The list of styles is fixed; you cannot add to it or edit it.
• Press Enter for a new paragraph with its normal spacing. Press Shift+Enter for a tighter line break within the same block of text.
• If you want HTML formatting such as a bulleted or numbered list, add it through the editor's HTML source view instead of typing it into the normal view. Tags typed directly into the normal view can appear as plain text in the sent message instead of formatting it.

Sandbox Email

In a sandbox, the Sandbox Mode Options card says: In sandbox mode, ALL emails from the system are redirected to one or more addresses. Enter those addresses here.

• Every email goes to the redirect addresses instead of the real recipients. Copy and blind-copy recipients are not reached either.
• If the list is empty, the sandbox sends no email at all, and nothing warns you.
• Each redirected message ends with Sandbox mode enabled. Original Target Emails: followed by the addresses it would have gone to.
• When one message is meant for several members, Rhythm records it in the first member's email history only, once for each redirect address. Three redirect addresses show three entries for one message.
• A preview of an email you are designing goes to the address you typed, even in a sandbox, and does not appear in any contact's history. Because it leaves no record, a preview or test message a staff member sent is a likely explanation if a member says they received a message twice but you can only find one send.
• When your Rhythm account goes live, redirection stops automatically. The list is kept but no longer used.

To stop staff on the redirect list from receiving sandbox mail, remove their addresses and save. Removing a row does not trigger the unsaved-changes warning, so remember to press Save Changes.

Saving, Reverting, and Leaving

• Save Changes saves the whole form, and pressing Enter in any single-line field does the same. There is no confirmation step.
• Cancel does not discard your changes or leave the page. To discard changes, leave the page and choose OK at You have unsaved changes! If you leave, your changes will be lost.
• Adding or removing list rows does not count as an unsaved change, so you can lose those edits without a warning if you leave.
• To undo a saved change, enter the previous value and save again. The screen does not show history.

Validation and Errors

What you see	Why	What to do
Please enter an appropriate value for Default From Name:. and, on saving, You haven't entered a valid value for Email Configuration	The sender name is empty	Enter a name
Please enter an appropriate value for Default Reply To:.	The reply-to is not an email address	Correct it or clear it
You haven't entered a valid value for Address	The address was changed but is missing a required part: Line 1, City, and, for the US, State and Postal Code	Complete the address
Unable to save settings	Rhythm refused the save, and the message explains why, such as an address that is not an email address or has not been verified	Correct the address, or verify it and try again
The page stays on Loading settings... just a moment...	Rhythm could not load the settings	Reload the page
Rhythm shows a message as sent to the right address, and sending to a different address for the same person works	The cause is usually outside Rhythm, such as a mailbox rule, forwarding, or filtering at the recipient's own organization	Point the recipient to their own IT team; a working alternate address is good evidence for them
A message from one process still does not arrive after you confirm the sender is verified	Other deliverability causes, separate from this process's own settings, can still block a message	Send that person a direct test message to see whether Rhythm-generated mail reaches them at all. If it still fails, contact Support with a copy of the affected message, including the from address and its headers

Related

• Account Settings: Address, Time Zone, Email Identity, and Logo: other organization-wide settings.
• Set Up Your Domains: The DNS Worksheet: preparing your own domain for sending.
• Your Rhythm Account, Customers, and Sandboxes: what a sandbox is.