Check your Google SRV Records

Many of our customers have trouble getting Olark setup with Google Apps for your domain. The most common reason this problem occurs is because your ISP has not configured your SRV records correctly. We've created a tutorial to help you and your ISP correctly configure your DNS records. (You might also want to take a look at the Google SRV Tutorial. Once you've added the correct SRV Records try the below tool to double check that your SRV records are correct.

If we this tool is unable to detect your SRV records as correctly configured after 24 hours, we highly recommend asking your ISP to double check the changed SRV Records.

Enter your domain name (i.e. olark.com):

Google SRV Record Tutorial

Google Apps SRV records can be a bit tricky to configure, so we created the below tutorial to make it easier for ANYONE to connect to make their Google Apps Chat accounts work with Olark. (This tutorial is also helpful if you are trying to federate your Google Apps Chat accounts.)

  1. Type your domain name:
  2. Goto your hosting company or domain provider's website. This might be Enom, Godaddy, Network Solutions, or one of the hundreds of other hosting companies. You will want to log into your hosting company's control panel and find an option to "Set DNS records for your domain". You may need to ask your hosting provider for help, as many providers do not make this an easy option to find.
  3. You will need to add the following DNS records to your domain. (In many cases you will need to tell your hosting company do this for you): 
    _xmpp-server._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 5 0 5269 xmpp-server.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server1.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server2.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server3.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server4.l.google.com.

_jabber._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 5 0 5269 xmpp-server.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server1.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server2.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server3.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server4.l.google.com.    

_xmpp-client._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 5 0 5222 talk.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 20 0 5222 talk1.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 20 0 5222 talk2.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 20 0 5222 talk3.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 20 0 5222 talk4.l.google.com.
  4. Some hosting companies and DNS providers do not let you add RAW DNS entries for your domain. Let me explain the parts of a DNS record, so you will know how to fill these records into a form. You will want to add SRV records to your domain. (SRV stands for service)

    _xmpp-client._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 5 0 5222 talk.l.google.com.

    _xmpp-client._tcp.domain.com. is the hostname. Some forms may ask you to fill in the SERVICE name, instead of the hostname. In this example the service name is "xmpp-client" and the protocol is "tcp".

    IN SRV - This means this is a SRV or service record. This entry is describing the location of a service for your domain.

    5 - The number that comes after the "IN SRV" is the priority of the service. Lower numbers mean higher preference

    0 - This is the weight of the entry. Google sets all of the weights of their entries to 0, so each server has equal weight.

    5222 - This is the port that the service runs on. In this example the xmpp-client service for the host domain.com runs on port 5222.

    talk.l.google.com. - This is the target of the entry. This tells the world that clients looking for the xmpp-client service on domain.com should connect to the host talk.l.google.com on port 5222.

  5. GoDaddy is particularly tricky. They have a tutorial for adding SRV records, but it is often hard to map from the raw SRV record to the fields they want you to fill in. We'll use an example to show to to fill in GoDaddy's forms.

    _xmpp-client._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 5 0 5222 talk.l.google.com.

    GoDaddy wants you to take an entry that looks like the above entry, and map it to a series of forms. You can almost do this by following the above entry left to right.

    Name: domain.com.

    Service: xmpp-client

    Protocol: tcp

    Priority: 5

    Weight: 0

    Port: 5222

    Target: talk.l.google.com

  6. Hopefully the above information was enough to get your DNS records set up. Remember it takes a while for your changes to take effect so come back to our SRV checker to see if your changes are live.
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