The Complete Sharepoint Email Integration Guide

If you want to learn how to configure SharePoint email integration, follow the illustrated steps and instructions to configure incoming or outgoing emails on your SharePoint-2013 farm. After you have installed SharePoint-2013, you can easily configure outgoing and incoming emails by using some applied settings. Most people experience some difficulties when configuring SharePoint for email integration. The SharePoint site and server contains a lot of information that needs to be learned in order for one to easily use SharePoint technologies.

Before you can configure incoming emails for a SharePoint-2013 farm, you need to install a Simple mail transfer protocol that is commonly abbreviated as SMTP in your server. Once you enable incoming emails on your site, you will be able to receive and store emails in a list or library of your site.

There are two scenarios that you can use to configure SharePoint email integration. The advanced and basic way of configuring email integrations. The basic is applied to a single server farm and it’s the most recommended for people who prefer using default settings set up by SharePoint. The Advanced-scenario is applied to a single server farm or multiple server farms, it’s the most complicated way of integrating emails in SharePoint and most people like it due to the numerous options that it provides.

You need to configure and install the SMTP in order to configure incoming emails on your SharePoint site. To do this follow the steps illustrated below on how to install SMTP

How to configure and install SMTP 

If your SharePoint site does not use a drop folder for incoming emails, configure and install SMTP on the front end web server.

  • The first thing you need to do is to verify that the user account that will perform the procedure is in the list of the administrator groups on the front end web server.
  • If the user is included click on “Start” and point to the “Administrative-Tolls”. Select “Server-Manager” in the options provided
  • In the server-manager click on Features.
  • In the “Features-Summary” click on “Add-Features” to open the “Add-features” wizard
  • On the “select-features-page” select the “SMTP_Server”
  • In the “Add-Features-Wizard” dialog box locate “Add-required-services” and click on the box options.
  • When promoted to the next step, click on “Next”. On the “Confirm-Installation-Page” click on Install
  • Once the installation is successful click on “close”

How to Configure SMTP

After you have configured the SMTP, you must configure it to accept emails from the mail-server of your site domain. Configuring the SMTP helps you to perform different actions on the Emails that you receive. By using the SMTP, you can include your servers in groups, individually or by domains.

Instructions on how to configure SMTP

  • The first thing you need to do is to verify that the user account that will perform the procedure is in the list of the administrator groups on the front end web server.
  • If the user is included click on “Start” and point to the “Administrative-Tolls”. Click on the “Internet-Information-Service-(IIS) 6.0 manager”
  • IN the (IIS) manager, expand the server-name that contains SMTP_server that you would like to configure.
  • By using your mouse, right click on the SMTP “Virtual-server” that is to be configured and click on “Start”
  • In the next part click on Properties.
  • In the “Access-Control” of the access-tab click on “Authentication”
  •  Verify that “anonymous-Access” is selected in the authentication dialog-box and click OK.
  • In the Relay-Restrictions area of the Access-tab click on Relay.
  • If you would like to accept relays from specific servers or one of them, perform the following steps:

-Click on “Only-The-List-Below”

-Click on Add and use the ip address list to apply on the servers that you want.

– Click on OK to close dialog box

  •  To close the relay-restriction box click OK

How to configure Incoming emails in a Basic-scenario

  • The first thing you need to do is to verify that the user account that will perform the procedure is in the list of the administrator groups on the front end web server.
  • Click “System-settings” in the central administration.
  •  In the “Email-Text-Message” section click on “Configure-Incoming-Email” settings
  • If you would like to configure your website to receive emails, click yes in the “Enable-Incoming-Email” section.
  • To connect to the directory-management-services click yes in the “Directory-Management-Service” section
  •  If you would like to use a “Remote-Directory-Management-Service” , select “Use-Remote”

How to configure incoming emails in an Advanced-scenario

  •  The first thing you need to do is to verify that the user account that will perform the procedure is in the list of the administrator groups on the front end web server.
  • Click “System-settings” in the central administration.
  • In the “Email-Text-Message” section click on “Configure-Incoming-Email” settings
  • To enable sites on your server to receive email, click on Yes in the “Enable-Incoming-Email” section.
  • Select Advanced mode
  • In this section you can specify a drop-folder instead of SMTP server
  •  To connect to the directory-management-services click yes in the “Directory-Management-Service” section
  • If you want to use a display name for your email, use this example to type it correctly (mymail.lookwood.com) in the “Email-server-Display-Address-Box”
  • Click on Ok

How to configure outgoing-emails for a web-application by using Central-Administration

  • The first thing you need to do is to verify that the user account that will perform the procedure is in the list of the administrator groups on the server that is running the website.
  • Click on the “Manage-Web-Applications” in the “Application-Management” section
  •  Select your web-application in the “web-application-Management” page and click on “outgoing-Email” in the “General-settings” group.
  •  If you want to use a display name for your email, use this example to type it correctly (myname.lookod.com) in the “outbound-SMTP-Server-Box”
  •  In the “Form-Address” box, type an email address that you would like to be displayed to your email recipients
  •  In the “Reply-To-Address” box type an email address that you would like recipients to reply to.
  • When setting up Characters, use the appropriate language for your site or email
  • (Xi) click on OK to finish.

If you can understand how to perform the above steps, you can easily configure SharePoint Email integration in your website.

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Marissa Hart is the Lead Author & Editor ShareMe. ShareMe is a blog focused on SharePoint Online. SharePoint Online delivers the powerful features of SharePoint without the associated overhead of managing the infrastructure.