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Changing the address of your Survey landing page subdomain (host mapping)

Peter

By default, the URL address of your survey landing page is a SweetHawk subdomain, (zendesk.sweethawk.co). However, you can map your own subdomain (e.g survey.mycompany.com) to the default survey landing page address. This feature is called host mapping.

This article contains the following sections:

1. Configuring a custom subdomain.

2. Add the custom subdomain within the app.

 

1. Configuring a custom subdomain.

The first step is to make your custom subdomain (survey.mycompany.com) an alias of the default survey landing page address. (An alias is simply an alternate address for a website.)

Note: You need to create a CNAME record on your domain registrar' website to create the alias. If you have any concerns, consult your system administrator, if you have one, before proceeding.

To make your subdomain an alias of the default survey landing page address:

  1. Sign in to your domain registrar's control panel.

    (Use the login name and password that you created when you registered the domain name.) 

  2. Look for the option to change DNS records.

    The option might be called something like DNS Management, Name Server Management, or Advanced Settings.

  3. Locate the CNAME records for your domain.

    A CNAME record, or Canonical Name record, is a type of alias used by the Domain Name System (DNS). Among other things, a CNAME record can be used to make a subdomain an alias of an external website. For more information, see CNAME records on Wikipedia.

  4. Do one of the following:
    • If you don't have a CNAME record for your subdomain yet, look for an option to add a new record.
    • If you already have a CNAME record for your subdomain, look for an option to edit the record.
  5. Point the CNAME record from your subdomain (shown in the Host Record field in the example below) to the default survey subdomain (shown in the Points To field).

    Host Record: survey
    TTL: 14400
    Type: CNAME
    Points To: zendesk.sweethawk.co.

The UI and terminology may vary depending on your registrar, but the concepts are the same.

Note: It may take time for changes to the DNS system to be implemented. Typically, it can take anywhere from a few hours to a day, depending on your Time To Live (TTL) settings in the registrar's control panel. In the example above, the TTL is 14,400 seconds, or 4 hours.

 

You can also set up HTTPS by creating a reverse proxy to zendesk.sweethawk.co instead of a CNAME. For more information, please reach out to our team at support@sweethawk.com

 

2. Add the custom subdomain within the app.

After making your subdomain an alias of the default survey landing page address, you need to specify the new address within the survey app in your instance of Zendesk Support.

To do this click on the survey icon on the right and go to the settings tab like this:

Untitled_and_SweetHawk__-_Agent.png

Then under the Landing page URL enter in the mapped domain (eg. survey.mycompany.com) and click "Save settings" like this:

SweetHawk__-_Agent.png

Sweet!

Now when one of your end users responds to a survey email they'll be taken to a mapped domain landing page. In the article above we've talked about survey.mycompany.com but in reality, it will be an actual company name, like below we've set up the domain mapping for Casterly Hotels... 

Customer_satisfaction_survey.png

 

HTTPS/SSL

If you would like to use HTTPS (secure http), we can host an SSL certificate for you. If you are currently on a trial of the app, this will end your trial and start your subscription. Please contact us to activate SSL for your domain.