Microsoft Online Services Team Blog : Administration Center

Send and Receive POP E-Mail with Exchange Online

JimGlynn — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:41:00 GMT

Exchange Online now supports POP e-mail, so you can send and receive Exchange Online e-mail using any POP e-mail client. For information about other recently announced features, see Service Update: October 2009 Release Availability, Features Announced.

NOTE: POP e-mail does not provide Free/Busy, presence, calendar, tasks, and other rich features normally associated with Exchange Online e-mail. Additionally, POP e-mail access cannot be enabled for Deskless Worker accounts.

Prerequisites

· If you are a Microsoft Online Services administrator, you can contact Microsoft Online Services Technical Support to request POP service, and provide them with the list of e-mail addresses to POP enable. You can specify a list of individual mailboxes or every mailbox in your organization. You can track the status of your service request on the Support tab of the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center.

· Any POP e-mail client.

· Microsoft Online Services user account with a Standard (not Deskless) Exchange Online license.

· Port 995 in through your company’s firewall.

Configuration

When Support notifies you that POP e-mail has been enabled, follow your POP e-mail client instructions to configure your e-mail client. You’ll need to provide the following information:

· Port number: 995

· Security protocol: SSL

· User account: For example, jim@example.com

· User account password

· POP Server: select from POP Servers by Location table below.

NOTE: If you want Exchange Online to keep a backup of your e-mail, select the configuration option that allows you to keep your e-mail messages on the server.

POP Servers by Location

Asia Pacific (APAC)

pop.mail.apac.microsoftonline.com

Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)

pop.mail.emea.microsoftonline.com

North America

pop.mail.microsoftonline.com

What State Are Your User Accounts In?

JimGlynn — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:25:00 GMT

The most common user account states are enabled and disabled, which are pretty straight forward. However, if your company is using the Microsoft Online Services Directory Synchronization tool, your user accounts can also be activated and deactivated. The combination of all of these states can be confusing, so let's look at what each state means.

The four states are:

· Enabled

· Disabled

· Deactivated

· Activated

Enabled and Disabled

If your company is using Active Directory, you'll be happy to know that enabled and disabled accounts work just like they do in Active Directory. You have the option to enable a user account when you create it. Users can log on with an enabled account and they are prevented from logging on if their account is disabled.

You may want to disable an account when someone goes on vacation, or if you want to temporarily lock an account for any reason. Disabled accounts continue to exist and use one or more licenses; they're just locked. Enabling the account unlocks it and returns it to service.

Deactivated

If you're not using the Directory Synchronization tool, you won't have deactivated user accounts. Deactivated accounts are visible in the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center. The good news is that they don't use any licenses, so they're free. Think of them as shadow accounts waiting for you to assign services to them.

Deactivated user accounts are created by the Directory Synchronization tool when it synchronizes all user accounts, contacts, and mail-enabled groups from your company's on-premises Active Directory directory service to Microsoft Online Services. Synchronizing accounts to Microsoft Online Services is a fast, easy way to create user accounts. However, if you have a large company, you may not want to assign services to all of your users at the same time, so synchronized accounts are in a deactivated state until you activate them by assigning services to them.

Activated

Activated user accounts are accounts that have been assigned one or more services. Each activated account uses one or more licenses. If you create a user account in the Administration Center, the account is automatically activated when you create it and assign a service to it.

You can activate deactivated user accounts by selecting one or more accounts in the Administration Center and clicking Activate User Accounts. This lets the service know that this is now a "real" user account that will start using licenses. The rest of the activation process works just like creating a new user account.

Service Update: August 2009 Release Availability, Features Announced

paulenglis — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 04:00:00 GMT

The Microsoft Online Services Service Update for August 2009 begins deployment into production data centers this week and is scheduled to be available to all customers by the end of August; updates to the release deployment status will be posted to the comment section of this blog post.

No scheduled downtime is planned for the Microsoft Online Administration Center or the availability of the services in the Business Productivity Online Suite.

The following features are included in this Service Update:

New Language Options for Microsoft Online Administration Center (MOAC)

The Microsoft Online Administration Center is adding eight new language options: Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Italian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish.

SMTP Relay Support

Exchange Online is enabled to support for SMTP relay, allowing SMTP-enabled applications to send e-mail via Exchange Online.

Exchange Online Journaling

Exchange Online journaling is enabled, allowing email to be journaled to third-party archiving solutions, including Exchange Hosted Archive. Journaling can be enabled by contacting Microsoft Online Services support and opening a Service Request.

While Exchange Online journaling allows email to be journaled to third-party archiving solutions, Microsoft Online Services does not support or certify these third-party solutions. It is the customer’s responsibility to configure their archiving solution to work with Exchange Online journaling.

Enabling Incoming Mail for Specific Domain Registrars

Stephanie Shenk — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:35:00 GMT

With Exchange Online, in order to allow your domain to receive e-mail, you need to modify the Mail Exchange (MX) record of your domain. This needs to be done at your domain registrar’s Web site, but navigating the various registrar Web sites can be confusing. Therefore, we've tracked down instructions specific to some of the more popular domain registrars.

The general process for enabling incoming mail for your domain is as follows. For a detailed procedure, see Enable Incoming E-Mail for a Domain.

1. In the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center, find your domain.

2. Click your domain to open the Domain Properties dialog box. On the Inbound Messaging tab, click Enable.

3. In the Enable Inbound Messaging Wizard, click Enable again.

4. At this point, the new MX record will be shown by the wizard. Using it, you need to change your MX record at your domain registrar. Specific instructions for several registrars can be found here:

· DomainDiscount24.com

· DomainDiscover.com

· dotster.com

· DynDNS.com

· gandi.net

· GoDaddy.com

· hover.com

· moniker.com

· mydomain.com

· no-ip.com

· yahoo.com

5. Return to the wizard and click Finish.

There are several details and considerations when enabling incoming mail for your domain. See Enable Incoming E-Mail for a Domain for these details.

Verifying Domains for Use in Microsoft Online Services

paulenglis — Fri, 22 May 2009 02:28:00 GMT

To use a custom domain in Microsoft Online Services, you need to verify your domain in the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center. The process for domain verification includes adding a CNAME record to your domain's DNS record. But navigating domain registrar Web sites can be confusing. To make verifying your domain easier, we've tracked down instructions specific to some of the more popular domain registrars.

The general process for domain verification is:

Gather information about your domain
Create an alias, or CNAME record, at your domain registrar
Confirm the verification

Steps 1 and 3 are performed within the Administration Center; instructions for these steps can be found in the Verify a Domain from Any Registrar Help article.

Step 2 varies for each registrar. Following are pages with instructions for some domain registrars:

· DomainDiscount24.com

· DomainDiscover.com

· dotster.com

· DynDNS.com

· gandi.net

· hover.com

· moniker.com

· mydomain.com

· no-ip.com

Don't see your registrar in this list? See Verify a Domain from Any Registrar for instructions for more domain registrars.

Microsoft Online Services Setup, On-boarding, and Administration

Lori - Microsoft — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:08:00 GMT

View the Webcast: Microsoft Online Services Setup, On-boarding, and Administration (Level 200)

Event Overview: The Business Productivity Online (BPO) Suite from Microsoft Online Services includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Live Meeting, and Exchange Hosted Filtering, enterprise-class software delivered as a subscription service, hosted by Microsoft, and sold with partners. In this webcast, we introduce the Microsoft Online Administration Center (MOAC) and the process for setting up and on-boarding an organization to the BPO Suite.

Presenter: Casey McKinnon, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation

Cannot Create a User in the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center

erikgun — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 21:48:00 GMT

There are currently two situations that may prevent you from creating a user account in the Microsoft Online Administration Center:

· You cannot access your company’s Live Meeting Conference Center.

· You are creating a user account with the same e-mail address as the one used to register with Microsoft Online Services.

Live Meeting Is Not Available

User account creation currently requires access to your company’s Live Meeting Conference Center. If the Conference Center is offline for maintenance or can’t be reached for some other reason, user account creation will fail. In this situation, please wait several hours before trying again to create the user account. This dependency will be removed before Microsoft Online Services is released.

User Account E-Mail Address Cannot Be Reused

Microsoft Online Services currently does not support creating a user account with exactly the same e-mail address as the one used to register with Microsoft Online Services. For example, if you use Jim@contoso.com when you register with the Microsoft Online Services Customer Portal and you try to create a new user account with the same e-mail address, creation of this user account will fail. If this occurs, contact Microsoft Online Services Technical Support. They will be able to help you create this user account. This issue will be resolved before Microsoft Online Services is released.

Service Administrator Passwords

erikgun — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 21:46:00 GMT

When your company’s technical contact receives their Microsoft Online Services credentials, they are given a service administrator account (for example, Admin@example1.microsoftonline.com), and a temporary password.

The first time your company’s technical contact signs in, they must change their temporary password. After changing their password, they are granted access to the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center.

The first action that the technical contact should perform, after getting access to the Administration Center, is to create a new user account with service administrator credentials. This new account can be assigned a mailbox and licenses for additional services.

Having more than one account with service administrator permissions provides a back-up in case you forget the password to one of the accounts. Any account with service administrator permissions can reset the password of any other Microsoft Online Services account for your company.

If you forget the passwords to your service administrator accounts, you can contact Microsoft Online Services Technical Support and ask for a password reset. The Support team will verify that you are trying to access the correct Administration Center, and then reset the password.

Asia Pacific (APAC)	pop.mail.apac.microsoftonline.com
Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)	pop.mail.emea.microsoftonline.com
North America	pop.mail.microsoftonline.com