Microsoft Online Services Team Blog : E-mail

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

Do you want to use Outlook 2003 with Exchange Online?

JimGlynn — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 04:12:00 GMT

In response to customer feedback, the Microsoft Online Services engineering team is developing the Outlook 2003 Connector. This is an Outlook add-in that will enable customers to use Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 to access all the features of Exchange Online. This includes free/busy information when setting up meetings, and the ability to access your organization’s global address list (GAL) from Outlook when you're offline. The add-in is currently in private beta testing with selected MVPs, Partners, and customers, and we’re ready to broaden the audience.

Help us make sure the Outlook 2003 Connector is ready
If you have purchased Microsoft Online Services, or are currently participating in a trial, and you’d like to use Outlook 2003 to access Exchange Online, navigate to to http://connect.microsoft.com, and provide the invitation ID below to participate in this beta program. Contact bpospb@microsoft.com if you need assistance.

Invitation ID: 2003-8PYX-K72K

If you’re not using Microsoft Online Services, but you’d like to take a look, go to the Microsoft Online Customer Portal and sign up for a free trial.

The Microsoft Online Services Team

Using SMTP Relay with Exchange Online

paulenglis — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:50:00 GMT

With the deployment of the August Service Update complete, SMTP clients can connect to Exchange Online SMTP servers and authenticate using Microsoft Online Services user credentials to send mail. The connection requires Transport Layer Security (TLS).

SMTP Relay capability allows organizations to use Exchange Online as an SMTP service for mail originating outside of the Exchange Online environment, for example SMTP-enabled applications such as fax servers.

To connect to the Microsoft Online Services SMTP server, open the SMTP client application and provide the following information:

· The fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the Microsoft Online Services SMTP server. The FQDN will be slightly different depending on which Microsoft Online Services Data Center your organization is connected to. The server FQDNs are:

o North America Data Center: Smtp.mail.microsoftonline.com

o Europe Data Center: Smtp.mail.emea.microsoftonline.com

o Asia Pacific Data Center: Smtp.mail.apac.microsoftonline.com

· The user name and password of a Microsoft Online Services user account with an Exchange Online license.

o On most client applications, this is under “My outgoing mail server (SMTP) requires authentication” – this should be configured “Yes”, and the corresponding Microsoft Online username and password supplied.

· The SMTP port to use: 587.

o On most client applications, this is under “Server Port Numbers for Outgoing Server (SMTP)” – this should be configured to use port 587

· Make sure that Transport Layer Security (TLS) is enabled in your SMTP client.

o On most client applications, this is under “My outgoing mail server (SMTP) requires an encrypted connection (SSL)” – this should be configured “Yes”

NOTE: The FROM address must use a SMTP domain of type “Authoritative” – this can be confirmed in Microsoft Online Administration Center, under the Users - Domains tab.

Important: Remember to update the user Microsoft Online Services Account password regularly, before the password expires, or your SMTP-enable application will be unable to connect and send email. Microsoft Online Services passwords expire every 90 days.

Workaround: E-Mail from Synchronized Distribution Groups Flagged as Spam

Stephanie Shenk — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 03:40:00 GMT

If all of the following conditions exist in your company, e-mail sent from Microsoft Exchange Online to your company’s distribution groups may be filtered as spam and not delivered.

· You have established e-mail coexistence between your on-premises Microsoft Exchange Server environment and Exchange Online.

· You are synchronizing your on-premises Active Directory with Microsoft Online Services.

· This synchronization includes distribution groups that were created in your on-premises e-mail environment.

· Members of these synchronized distribution groups have been migrated to Exchange Online, but still have mailboxes in your on-premises e-mail system.

Why does this happen? Distribution groups have an Active Directory property called ReportToOriginatorEnabled. This property can have a value of True or False. If set to True, the e-mail system receiving the mail will be able to read where the mail is coming from; if False, the receiving e-mail system will not be able to tell where the mail is coming from.

If a distribution group in your on-premises e-mail system has this property set to False, this value will be synchronized with the distribution group in Exchange Online, which in turn means that e-mail sent to members of this distribution group from users with Exchange Online mailboxes will have empty Return Path headers. These empty headers may trigger your spam filtering server or service to filter these e-mails as spam and prevent delivery of these messages to users with mailboxes in your on-premises e-mail system.

Workaround

To ensure delivery of e-mail, set the value of the ReportToOriginatorEnabled property to True for all distribution groups in your on-premises e-mail system. You can do this with LDP.EXE, ADSI Edit, or a script that can modify the ReportToOriginatorEnabled property. After you make this change, this property will be updated in Exchange Online at the next synchronization.

Note: This condition does not affect distribution groups that were created in the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center because these distribution groups are created with the ReportToOriginatorEnabled property set to True.

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.

Exchange Online Adds Support for Outlook 2003

paulenglis — Fri, 22 May 2009 02:34:00 GMT

Starting in June 2009, organizations can use Outlook 2003 to connect to Exchange Online Standard. Prior to this update, customers could connect to Exchange Online Standard via Outlook 2007 or Outlook Web Access (OWA).

Customers should be aware of two technical caveats when using Outlook 2003 with Exchange Online Standard.

1. Exchange Online Standard will not support free/busy status in Outlook 2003. A workaround for this is to use Outlook Web Access.

2. Exchange Online Standard will not support offline address books in Outlook 2003. Global Address Lists will not be available in offline mode.

Support for free/busy status and offline address books is scheduled to be added later in the calendar year.

This update will not impact Exchange Online Dedicated customers, typically enterprise organizations with more than 5,000 end-users. Exchange Online Dedicated fully supports Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, and OWA today.

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.

Time Out! for Outlook Web Access

Stephanie Shenk — Wed, 20 May 2009 04:42:00 GMT

I’ve been hearing accounts lately of people being unclear about the automatic time-out, or session length, feature of Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access (OWA). Sometimes people are getting unexpectedly bounced out of OWA sessions, and sometimes they’re just worried that other customers are using OWA without being aware of the potential security issues or the automatic time-outs. Let’s review how OWA tackles user location and session length.

Because OWA is designed to be accessed from any computer with a Web browser and an Internet connection, it is inherently less secure than its client-based counterpart, Microsoft Office Outlook. That’s why OWA prompts you to provide your location information before you log on. By assigning different time outs based on user location, OWA helps reduce the possibility of unauthorized personnel accessing your mail.

· Public or shared computer: If you indicate that you are logging on from a public or shared computer, your session will automatically time out after 15 minutes of inactivity and your user name will not be saved.

· Private computer: If you indicate that you are logging on from a private computer, OWA assumes that you are working from a secure computer, most likely your own, or at least one you can exercise control over, and your session will not expire until after 8 hours of inactivity. Your user name is saved.

Note: These two time-out periods are the default values for OWA. The time outs can be changed on certain machines by administrators.

You can see the trust issues here. OWA relies on you to be honest and diligent about the nature of your computer. Even if you select the “public or shared computer” option and your session automatically times out after a short period, you should never leave the computer unattended while you are logged on and you should always log out as soon as you have finished with mail.

Likewise, even if you are accessing OWA from a private computer, you should always lock your computer when you leave it for any length of time. COMMAND+L is your friend! (Or if you are running Windows XP, CTRL+ALT+DELETE>Lock Computer.)

Here’s a handy table:

Computer or operating system	Session length or shortcut
Public or shared computer	OWA session times out after 15 minutes of inactivity. Cookie expires too.
Private computer	OWA session times out after 8 hours of inactivity.
Windows Vista	To lock computer, click COMMAND+L.
Windows XP	To lock computer, click CTRL+ALT+DELETE and then click Lock Computer.

Exchange to Online!

arvindsuthar — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 01:47:00 GMT

This is Arvind Suthar, Director of Service for Microsoft Online. We are ramping up our community efforts and our team is excited to engage with you now that our service is live. We have a series of postings planned to introduce our team, dig into a series of technical topics, and trigger discussion around how we can make Microsoft Online more valuable for you. Please feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions through our feedback form or in the comments below.

We work closely with customers in our Beta and Technology Adoption programs during their migration to Microsoft Online. During this process, we have identified some frequently asked questions around migration. Erik Ashby is a Senior Program Manager on the Microsoft Online team focused on simplifying migration to Microsoft Online. I asked Erik to take some time to answer some of these frequently asked questions in a post. - Arvind

Customers running Microsoft Exchange who are interested in moving to Exchange Online often ask me questions about how to do ‘Exchange to Online.’ Exchange Online supports several migration models and offers a set of tools that make the move easy. Here I recap some frequently asked questions around migrating to Exchange Online from an on-premise Microsoft Exchange environment. Detailed instructions on the process referred to below are fully documented in our Migrate to Microsoft Online Services whitepaper.

How do I get started?

Purchase a subscription or sign up for a free 30 day Microsoft Online trial here. We will create a fully functional sample domain for you to test drive the service. You will be able to send and receive email and perform all the migration steps at this sample domain. Your domain will be named something like “yourdomain1.microsoftonline.com” or you can verify ownership of a permanent domain name like "yourdomain1.com" and begin using that.

Is migrating my Exchange environment to Microsoft Online complicated?

Not really. There are three basic steps that you will need to go through and the Microsoft Online Admin Console will walk you through each step with tools that will do most of the heavy lifting. The three steps to move to Microsoft Online are:

1. Configure Exchange to send mail to Microsoft Online: To get your mail traffic flowing to Microsoft Online, you will configure Transport Layer Security (TLS) and create an SMTP connector to start forwarding email from selected accounts on your Exchange server to your Microsoft Online account. Later, when all of your users have mailboxes on Microsoft Online, you can redirect all your email traffic directly to Microsoft Online by setting your MX records to point to:

mail.global.frontbridge.com

2. Install and run the Microsoft Online Directory Sync tool: This is a tool that will run in your on-premise topology and provide regular one-way synchronization of user accounts, e-mail–enabled contacts, and e-mail-enabled groups from your local Active Directory to Microsoft Online. This will allow Exchange On-Premise and Exchange Online users to see each other in GAL lookups. Also, once the GAL accounts have been copied to Microsoft Online you can activate the accounts within Microsoft Online.

3. Install and run the Microsoft Online Migration Tool: This is a tool that will bulk migrate Exchange mailbox content to Microsoft Online and establish mail forwarding so that all new mail will now be delivered to Microsoft Online.

Can I migrate to Microsoft Online incrementally?

One of the first questions customers face is how long they want to take to migrate to Microsoft Online. Broadly, there are two approaches:

1. perform a single large migration of all mailboxes at once (aka ‘Big-Bang’ migration), or

2. stage the migration over a period of time

Tools provided by Microsoft Online support both methods. For big-bang migrations the Microsoft Online Migration tool provides an easy-to-use migration wizard that can bulk migrate Exchange mailboxes and it can be fully automated with PowerShell. For migrations that are staged over a period of time, one-way synchronization directory synchronization from your local Active Directory to Microsoft online will allow users to share a synchronized GAL and unified messaging experience whether they have been migrated to Microsoft Online or are still using on-premise Exchange. We call this email coexistence.

Note that during coexistence, free/busy lookup and delegate access between a mailbox that is on-premise and a mailbox in Microsoft Online is not possible. Also, during coexistence, if a user has both an on-premise Exchange mailbox and a mailbox in Microsoft Online, these mailboxes can get out-of-sync after a migration. The migration will copy the content of a mailbox to Microsoft Online and establish a mail forward so that new mail will be directed to Microsoft Online, but any changes that are made to either mailbox after the migration will not be reflected in the other mailbox. Typically this is not a problem since most people will use only one of the mailboxes or will remove the on-premise mailbox after a migration.

Although we have had a fair mix of customers doing both big-bang and staged migrations, at this point most customers are going with quick ‘Big-Bang’ migrations and we have seen several companies with over 1000 users successfully execute a ‘Big-Bang’ migration.

Can I use email coexistence during a trial?

Yes, even if you are planning on a ‘Big-Bang’ migration, using the coexistence tools is a good way for you to have a few users ‘Try’ the Microsoft Online services. These tools allow several people to exist with mailboxes in Microsoft Online but still share the same GAL and messaging experience with others still on Exchange On- Premise. The same limitations for free/busy lookup and delegate access exist. Also, because mailboxes will get out of synch as mentioned above, you would need to copy any mail in the Microsoft Online accounts off to a local PST if you ultimately chose not to migrate.

To address synchronization issue between the Exchange and Microsoft Online mailboxes , Cemaphore, a Microsoft partner, offers a free 15 day trial of a full two way mailbox synchronization tool between your on-premise Exchange environment and Microsoft Online. MailShadow® for Exchange Online will continuously synchronize mailboxes from an on-premise Exchange server to Microsoft Online. This makes trialing Microsoft Online even easier.

Can I just export my mail messages to a PST and import into Microsoft Online?

Although Outlook is an option for migrating content, I would not recommend using it for migrating Exchange mailboxes. PST files store local email recipients and email senders using references to Active Directory. When your Active Directory server changes these references may no longer be valid. The Microsoft Online Migration tool performs the necessary translation when moving messages to Microsoft Online. Outlook is great as a generic tool to get content from non-standard sources like files, databases, and other sources into Microsoft Online, but for migrating Exchange mailboxes stick with the migration tools.

The bottom line is organizations are already moving from Exchange to Microsoft Online through different models and are using the Microsoft Online coexistence and migration tools to make their move simple and painless.

Erik Ashby

Sr. Program Manger

Microsoft Online

Verify Microsoft Online Services Transport Layer Security (TLS) E-mail Delivery

Ryan J. Phillips — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:29:00 GMT

To secure e-mail message delivery between your on-premise and Online environments first, follow the steps on how to configure your on-premise messaging environment.

Next, determine whether Transport Layer Security (TLS) was used during Message Delivery. Assumption: Your on-premise SMTP Connector has been configured to request a TLS Session.

Send a test message from your on-premise environment to a Microsoft Online Services mailbox.
Log in to your Microsoft Online Services mailbox by opening Office Outlook.
Open the test message that you sent from from your on-premise sender, and then click the small down-arrow in the options section:
Review the Header information for TLS, which indicates that the message was delivered using TLS:

Note: Perform this test in the opposite direction to make sure TLS is being used in both directions

Exchange Hosted Services (EHS) front-ends all Microsoft Online Mail and uses Deterministic TLS when sending/receiving messages, which means that it will attempt to send/receive mail via TLS (issuing EHLO statements to understand the message servers capabilities).

On-Premise à TLS à EHS à TLS à Microsoft Online Services

Microsoft Online Services à TLS à EHS à TLS à On-Premise

Note: IF TLS is not available anywhere along this path, delivery will fallback to SMTP port 25 and deliver in clear-text.

If a customer requires full TLS Messaging Transport capabilities, they will need a TRUSTED certificate (a certificate that can be verified and is trusted – Verisign, GoDaddy, etc.) on their On-Premise Exchange Bridgehead Server, so when MS Online/EHS delivers mail, it can properly negotiate the TLS session. ALSO, the On-Premise Exchange Admin must configure their SMTP Connector to use Outbound Security – TLS, in order to request a TLS session for any Address Namespaces (i.e. contoso1.microsoftonline.com) defined for that Connector.

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.

Mac/Entourage: Global Address List (GAL) Access for Entourage 2008

kevw@microsoft.com — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:44:00 GMT

We have gotten a few questions about getting some sort of workaround for GAL lookups using Entourage with Microsoft Online Services. While a couple of Mac users within our team have written a GAL lookup add on for Entourage, we cannot officially release it as a Microsoft product due to various reasons.

However, there are a couple of Apple Scripts on the internet similar to our internal solution that will enable GAL lookups for Entourage connected to Microsoft Online Services

http://www.entourage.mvps.org/exchange/exchangelookups.html

http://www.xutils.com/owagalsearch/

Note: The above information is provided as-is and is NOT supported by the Microsoft Online Services Support Team.

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