Note: This offering is currently in closed beta, available to select Pendo customers for testing. The information that follows isn't a commitment, promise, or legal obligation. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described here are subject to change at the discretion of Pendo, which can occur without notice. If you're interested in getting early access and providing feedback, contact your Pendo account representative.
This article outlines how you can configure a CNAME record at the organization level to create hostnames under your own application’s domain, without having to go through the Support team. You can use these in place of Pendo hostnames for sending events and downloading guide content.
This helps to ensure that events are collected and guides are served to visitors even with ad-blocking software, firewalls, web filters, and so forth. It’s also useful for brand consistency because you can use your own domain instead of Pendo’s.
Prerequisites
We strongly recommend that you first read CNAME for Pendo before continuing with this article.
The instructions that follow require engineering resources to update the Pendo installation and DNS entries. You must have CNAME access included in your organization’s Pendo contract, a static IP address, a proxy, and an SSL certificate that you provide.
Technical configurations such as those outlined in this article require organization admin permissions. Organization admins are a level above subscription admins and can impact multiple Pendo subscriptions but can’t change individual subscription settings, guides, or data visibility, or control subscription admin access unless they also have subscription admin permissions. Subscription admin access is still the highest level of access for the day-to-day management of your admin permissions.
Add a CNAME configuration
Before continuing, read the CNAME for Pendo article.
To add a new CNAME configuration to your organization, you must:
Step 1. Create a new CNAME configuration
Navigate to CNAME in Settings > Organization settings > CNAME. Hover over the subscription that you’d like to configure, and select View CNAME Configuration. Then, in the Subscription CNAME Settings page:
- Select Manage CNAME Configurations in the top-right corner. This opens the CNAME Configuration page.
- Select New CNAME Configuration in the top-right corner of the page. This opens the setup window.
- Enter the Name, Domain, Content Prefix, and Data Prefix for your CNAME configuration and then select Save.
- Wait for an email from Pendo prompting you to check the status of your configuration in Pendo and update your DNS entries to the configuration.
Step 2. Update your DNS enquiries
When CNAME configuration and verification is complete, with a status of Done under the Status column, you receive communication from Pendo asking you to insert code into your Pendo install script. Copy and paste the DNS entries into your frontend code. Pendo automatically changes and finalizes the changes, and sends you a confirmation email.
You can also find this code by opening the CNAME configuration you just created in the Subscription CNAME Settings page:
- Navigate to Settings > Organization Settings > CNAME.
- Hover over the subscription that you’d like to configure.
- Select View CNAME Configuration to open the Subscription CNAME Settings page.
- Select the name of CNAME configuration you want to add to your organization.
- Copy the DNS entries. These are the same DNS entries listed in your email from Pendo letting you know that your CNAME configuration is ready.
- Wait for an email from Pendo letting you know that a CNAME is ready to assign.
Manage Subscription CNAME Settings
Navigate to Settings > Organization settings > CNAME from the left-side navigation. Hover over the subscription that you’d like to configure, and select View CNAME Configuration. This takes you to the Subscription CNAME Settings page, which shows the currently assigned CNAME configurations for all apps in the subscription.
You can change CNAME Configuration using the dropdown menu for each item in the table. CNAME configuration uses the account’s specified domain within Pendo’s frontend code. For this reason, if you change the CNAME configuration, you must also update the pendo.js URL in your Pendo install script, and your CSP configuration if applicable.
Update your Pendo install script
After the CNAME is assigned to the application, Pendo rewrites the subscription’s Pendo agent using the new settings. From here on, all communication with Pendo happens through the aliases provided by the CNAME.
Next, update your Pendo install script (commonly referred to as "the snippet") anywhere it’s added in your application with your new content host. The cdn.pendo.io continues to work while you do this, so no data is lost.
If you're installing Pendo with Twilio Segment, you can add the content host in your Segment destination settings using the CNAME content host field. For more information on how to do this, see Step 2. Add the Pendo Web (Actions) destination in Install Pendo through Twilio Segment.
Update existing guides
After updating your application with a new CNAME configuration, you must resave each of your published guides and any images or content in those guides so that their content references the new aliases.
Repeat the following steps for each active guide:
- Find and open your guide to view its details.
- Select Manage in my app in the top right of the Content section.
- Select Save in the banner of the Visual Design Studio, which is typically located at the top or bottom of your browser. For more information, see Create a guide.