For vanity domains that need customer-managed SSL certificates installed, Incident IQ recommends using Microsoft Azure as a potential solution for hosting and redirecting user traffic. Cloudflare and other providers are also available; however, below are the instructions for how to set up your vanity domain on Microsoft Azure with an SSL certificate installed. This will automatically redirect to incidentiq.com:
Login to https://portal.azure.com (if your district doesn’t already have an account, we recommend creating one using your district’s email address.)
From the Azure services dashboard, click Create a resource, search for and select CDN from the results. Please note some cost may be incurred with simple CDN website hosting - check with Microsoft regarding pricing and availability. There are free tiers available. However, depending on usage, those tier options may not be sufficient to handle all present and future traffic.
For the new CDN resource, fill in the Name, Subscription, Resource Group, and Pricing tier, along with checking Create a new CDN endpoint now (for the Pricing tier, we recommend Standard Microsoft.) Then fill in the CDN endpoint name and Origin type of value Custom origin.
In the Origin hostname field, enter redirect.incidentiq.com.
Click Create, and you will receive a notification that your CDN profile has been created (see the upper right in the Azure portal for notifications.)
Once created, click / navigate to your newly created CDN profile and ensure the “Overview” details page is displayed. “Overview” should be highlighted in the CDN profile details screen.
Under the section titled Endpoints within Overview, click on the Custom origin endpoint you created from the endpoints list.
Click the + Custom domain button on the endpoint details screen at the top.
For a Custom hostname, enter your vanity domain hostname. For example, “myhelpdesk.my-districtvanity-domain.org.” Please note that a CNAME record must already be set up that points to the Azure CDN endpoint configured above. Suppose this CNAME record is not yet present. In that case, Microsoft will display the following warning: “Before you can associate a domain with this CDN endpoint, you need to create a CNAME record with your DNS provider for ‘myhelpdesk.my-district-vanity domain.org’ that points to ‘test1-myhelpdesk.azureedge.net’.” where “test1-myhelpdesk” is the name you entered for the CDN endpoint name.
Once the custom domain is added, click on the custom domain record and select On under Custom domain HTTPS. For Certificate management type, we recommend “CDN managed.” Microsoft will then walk you through validating your domain and setting up your certificate for CDN management. Use of your own certificate is also an option. For more information regarding certificate management, please see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cdn/cdn-custom-ssl?tabs=option-1-default-enable-https-with-a-cdn-managed-certificate. Please note there are costs associated with hosted certificate management - check with Microsoft regarding pricing and availability.
Close the Custom Domain screen, and you should be back at the endpoint Overview screen. Once there, click / navigate to Origin in the endpoint’s left navigation bar. For the field Origin host header only, enter your vanity domain hostname. For example, “myhelpdesk.my-district-vanity-domain.org.” Click Save on this Origin screen once entered.
Once all saves have been committed / posted by Microsoft to their edge networks, you should then be able to navigate to your vanity domain hostname using HTTPS / SSL (for example, “https://myhelpdesk.my-district-vanity-domain.org”) and your newly configured Microsoft Azure website should facilitate an HTTP server request to the backend “redirect.incidentiq.com” website which should, in turn, redirect you to your Incident IQ domain.
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Hannah Bailey - Director, Customer Engagement