MailOps engineers have a lot on their plates. If it's not a firewall thing, its a server thing, or a DNS thing, or a deliverability thing, or a database thing. It helps to have good diagnostic tools at your disposal that can help you narrow down a problem or alert you when there is one in the first place. I have used many and have written a few myself, but this new one from WTTW (Word To The Wise) is one of the best I have seen in a long time.
This is me sending a huge shout out to team Atkins over at Word to the Wise for the new tool AboutMyEmail. They blogged about it here on January 2nd and it is worth a read. With Yahoo and Google about to start clamping down on authentication in the near future, many people (who should have already been doing these things) are scrambling to make sure they have all their ducks in a row. This is a tool that can help you get there quicker.
Personally, I thought I had all the DNS in line, and to be fair, it *was* ok before I made a few edits. Since I had just moved some configuration around, I tested with this new tool and found out I had an SPF issue I had missed. Totally my fault, but I would have missed it without this tool. It only took a few minutes digging through the very detailed diagnostic data it provides to pinpoint the issue and fix it.
And this is me saying Thank You for making this MailOps guy's job easier :)