Issue preparing DNS records for click tracking & link branding with SSL in SendGrid

Website, Application, Performance DNS & Network
1

What is the name of the domain?

What is the issue you’re encountering

Finding the CDN proxy target to enter into the DNS record

What steps have you taken to resolve the issue?

Hi Community!

I’m having an issue with SendGrid. Specifically I’m following the steps to set up SSL for click tracking (and link branding) in SendGrid. Unfortunately the Cloudflare Community interface won’t allow me to include a URL here (it’s telling me I can only include 4 links, even though I’m only including 1 link), but if you enter “SendGrid How to Set Up SSL Click Tracking” into a search engine it will be the first result.

Here’s a summary of where I’m at with it:

• Step 1: Get an SSL in Cloudflare. I bought the Advanced SSL because SendGrid doesn’t allow wildcard SSLs (*.example.com) for this purpose, and also because my branded links are more than one level subdomain (sub.dom.ain.com).
• Step 2: In SendGrid I turned on click tracking, created CNAME DNS records for link branding, installed those DNS records in Cloudflare, and verified them in SendGrid.
• Step 3: Prepare a proxy on your CDN. According to SendGrid support, in Cloudflare all you have to do is toggle the proxy to ‘ON’ in the DNS record, which I did.
• Step 4: Point the first CNAME record to your CDN. This is where I’m getting stuck. SendGrid docs and support tell me change the ‘target’ in the record from sendgrid.net (needed to verify link branding) to my CDN proxy prepared in the previous step. But I don’t know how to find that value and SendGrid support tells me that they don’t know how to find it either and they can’t direct me anywhere else to find it.

Any thoughts on where I can find the value I need for Step 4? (or any other ideas on how to accomplish this?)

What feature, service or problem is this related to?

DNS records

2

Perhaps you can take a look at Content Delivery Networks | SendGrid Docs | Twilio and
Using CloudFlare as your Content Delivery Network (CDN) | SendGrid Docs | Twilio?

3

I did look into those docs @hollynghiem, and I’ve set that up in my Cloudflare instance.

I think the answer to my problem is that you can skip Step 4 in the SendGrid docs completely as long as you toggle the Proxy setting for the DNS record to ‘ON’.

However I’m still going back and forth with SendGrid on this. Hoping to have a resolution in the next day or two. I’ll update this ticket when I get one.

I appreciate you responding to this, @hollynghiem :slight_smile:

4

Turns out all you have to do is toggle the Proxy setting to ‘ON’ in the CNAME records. This means that you can skip steps 3 and 4 in SendGrid’s guide to setting up SSL Click Tracking.