Issue Symptoms
You have received a proactive notification from Zendesk regarding your host-mapping configuration that must be resolved in order for your Help Center to remain accessible to your customers.
Resolution Steps
1. Check if your host-mapped Help Center is currently accessible by visiting your branded Help Center URL (e.g. support.yourcompany.com).
- If this page is currently available, you have a little time to make these changes. However, if this misconfiguration is still present when your certificate is up for renewal (typically within the next 30 days), Zendesk will remove the invalid host mapping to ensure the security and usability of your subdomain(s) or brand(s). This means that your Zendesk account would only be available by accessing the yoursubdomain.zendesk.com URL.
- If this page is currently not available, this means your Help Center is currently unavailable to your customers at the branded URL. We recommend resolving this as soon as possible to maintain accessibility. If you’re unsure how quickly you’ll be able to resolve the error, you can temporarily deactivate your host mapping by clearing the value currently set in your host mapping settings in your Zendesk account. See this article for more information on where to find this setting: Host mapping - Changing the URL of your Help Center.
2. Use the following tools to ensure you have a proper CNAME DNS record set up, along with a CAA record if needed, and that the records are propagated worldwide. Note that these are third-party tools, and you are welcome to use any other tools you prefer in order to gather this information.
- Check if CNAME exists that points your host-mapped domain to subdomain.zendesk.com
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For all users: MxToolbox is a website that offers some email and domain lookup tools. If you prefer using a web interface, you can visit their CNAME lookup tool. A common result from that tool will look like this:
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For Mac users: Open the Terminal application and type dig followed by your branded URL. The result should look similar to this:
- For Windows users: Open the Command Prompt application and type in nslookup followed by your branded URL. The result should look similar to this:
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For all users: MxToolbox is a website that offers some email and domain lookup tools. If you prefer using a web interface, you can visit their CNAME lookup tool. A common result from that tool will look like this:
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Check if your CNAME is propagated worldwide.
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For all users: DNS Checker is a site that will check for various types of DNS records on many servers across the globe. Go to DNS Checker and type your branded URL in the ‘example.com' field. Next, choose CNAME from the dropdown next to that, then click Search. You should see all or nearly all green checks from the various tests with yoursubdomain.zendesk.com as the result:
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For all users: DNS Checker is a site that will check for various types of DNS records on many servers across the globe. Go to DNS Checker and type your branded URL in the ‘example.com' field. Next, choose CNAME from the dropdown next to that, then click Search. You should see all or nearly all green checks from the various tests with yoursubdomain.zendesk.com as the result:
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Check that a CAA record is in place if it is needed by going to DNS Spy and typing your branded URL into the search bar under Validate your CAA records, then click Validate CAA.
- If the return message is Sorry we couldn’t detect any CAA records, there is no need for further action.
- If results are found, verify that “letsencrypt.org” is one of the certificate authorities allowed to issue certificates. If this domain is not shown amongst the results, you will need to contact your domain admin or IT person to get a CAA record added for letsencrypt.org.
If you follow the steps above and still have questions, contact our Support team by replying to the proactive notification you received, and let us know the results you found from the tests you performed.
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