Resolver Domains

Serving GS1 Digital Links from your own hostname — CNAME setup, verification, and test prefixes to try it without a GS1 license.

ddmresolvercustom-domaincnamednsgcp 3 min read

Why a domain of your own

The address in your QR codes is printed on physical products and will be scanned for years. Two things follow. First, it should carry your name — https://id.your-brand.com/01/… builds trust in a way a shared technical hostname never will, and consumers increasingly look at where a code leads before tapping. Second, and more strategically: the domain in the printed code is the one thing you can never change afterwards, so it had better be one you control. If it is your domain, you can move resolvers, providers, even platforms — the packaging never knows.

Domains is where you connect such a hostname to the resolver. Technically this is a CNAME binding: you create a DNS record that declares "requests to id.your-brand.com are answered by the resolver", and you tell the resolver which of your GS1 Company Prefixes the domain answers for — so it knows which identifiers are yours. From then on, scans of your products resolve under your brand, and because the resolver can attribute those scans to your domain, EPCIS capture and Scan Analytics know they belong to you.

The domain list

Figure 1: Each domain with its prefixes and where it stands — active, pending DNS, check failed or disabled

The status badge is the page's whole answer to "does it work?":

Status	Meaning
Active	DNS verified; the domain serves Digital Links
Pending DNS	Created, waiting for the CNAME to appear
Check failed	DNS answered, but wrongly — the row says what DNS actually returned
Disabled	Kept, but not serving

Adding a domain

The drawer asks for the hostname (the domain's immutable identity — validated before anything is sent: a plain DNS name, no scheme, port, path or query), a display name, the company prefixes this domain answers for, and the Enabled switch.

Figure 2: Adding a domain — hostname, prefixes, the EPCIS-capture opt-in, and the DNS record already taking shape below

Optionally, an EPCIS capture block names a read point (as a GLN of one of your places), a business step and a business location — with these set, scans on this domain generate traceability events for products that opted in.

DNS setup, made boring

Domain setup usually fails in the hand-over between two people: the person clicking in DDM and the person who administers DNS. The drawer's DNS card is written for that hand-over — it contains the exact record to create, ready to paste into a ticket:

Figure 3: The DNS card — the exact CNAME to paste, and Check now to re-verify

Type:    CNAME
Name:    id.your-brand.com
Target:  ingress.example.com   # the target shown in your drawer

Once DNS is set, Check now verifies on the spot. A failed check tells you what DNS actually answered — "CNAME points at old-host.example instead of …" — so the fix is never a guessing game. The same check keeps running periodically afterwards: a domain whose DNS silently breaks months later moves to Check failed with the same concrete diagnosis, instead of just going dark.

Test prefixes (952 range)

Everything on this page can be tried without owning a GS1 license. GS1 reserves the prefix range 952 for demonstration and testing, and Request test GCP allocates a prefix from it to your tenant. Bind it to a domain, create products under it — the 952 range is exempt from Verified-by-GS1 — print a test QR code, scan it, watch it resolve. When the experiment is over, hand the prefix back. It is the sandbox for the whole Digital Link chain, end to end.