Elliott SMTP Email Settings for Outlook 365 or Hosted Email Solutions
Release Date: 1/19/2018
Revision Date: 9/26/2022
Version: 8.0 & Up
Introduction
Starting with Elliott V8, we support both SMTP and MAPI interfaces for sending emails. MAPI is the old email interface method, which we find more and more difficult to support. Also, MAPI does not support many new features in Elliott V8, including sending reports from the report or PDF viewer and, most importantly, MAPI does not support Elliott PDF PostOffice. Therefore, we recommend that you use the SMTP interface to send emails in Elliott V8.
In our original SMTP email design, we envisioned one central credential for authorization as setup in the Elliott configuration utility. Then the admin would configure each user's email in password setup. Elliott would then use that as the send-from email with the central credential for authorization. While this method works well for in-house hosted Exchange servers, it does not work well for Outlook 365 due to security reasons. Outlook 365 by default does not allow the send-from email be different than the authentication email. The proper way is to set up each individual user's SMTP send-from and authentication emails to match. Alternatively, you might also go to the Outlook 365 admin tools area and configure users to allow "send as" to bypass the security restrictions.
A growing trend is that more and more Elliott user sites are switching to Microsoft Outlook 365 or Office 365. Throughout this document, when we say Outlook 365, we mean Outlook 365, Office 365 or Exchange online: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/exchange/compare-microsoft-exchange-online-plans. The differences are software licensing. The hosting cost for Outlook 365 can be actually be very cost-effective. The principles we talk about in this article apply to all hosted email solutions, not just Outlook 365.
The current trend of the IT world is to choose the cloud computing solution with a subscribing model instead of buying the software with perpetual licenses. Microsoft is making a big push to convert their users to their cloud computing solutions. There are many benefits for going with Outlook 365. This includes, but is not limited to, reduced IT management costs, better security to filter malware and data production, and reduced hardware and software costs.
For Elliott 8.6 or higher users, please also reference the following article: https://support.elliott.com/knowledgebase/articles/1976928-feature-8-6-email-improvements-multiple-email-s.
Elliott Global SMTP Configuration
For Elliott 8.0-8.2, in the Elliott bin folder (e.g. M:\Elliott7\Bin) , there's an executable called EL800CF.EXE. When you launch this EXE, the following window appears:
For Elliott 8.5 & up, in the Elliott bin?? folder (e.g. M:\Elliott7\Bin85) , there's an executable called EL850CF.EXE. When you launch this EXE, the following window appears when you choose the "Email" tab:
- First, make sure you choose "SMTP" as your email interface method.
- Second, enter your mail server as "smtp.office365.com:587."
- Check "Use Authentication." It is optional to check "Ignore Certificate Error." You can assume that you will not receive a certificate error when communicating with Microsoft's mail server. Then choose one of your email account setups in Outlook 365 as the default to authenticate your outgoing emails.
- Enter the password of your email account. There was a bug where the password could not be longer than 10 digits, but that was fixed in April 2017. If your Elliott version is earlier than that, you should update to the latest version.
- Lastly, choose to communicate with SSL so your email content is secured when sending over the Internet to Microsoft's mail server.
- The Admin Email is the default "sent from" email name and address if the user name and email address is not set up in Password setup. Since the sent from name and email address cannot be blank, you must set up a default sent from email name and address when that happens. See sample screen below:
- Finally, you should click on the "Test" button to make sure that you can send the email with your settings.
Debugging Email Sending Error
The biggest issue with setting up a common account for all outgoing email is that Outlook 365 may not work. You can find out the details of the email error message by bringing up the the email log file in <ElliottRoot>\Log\<CompanyID>\Emaillog-YYMMDDHHMMSS.CSV. See sample screen below:
As you can see, the mail system is responding with the following error message:
Mailbox unavailable. The server response was: 5.7.60 SMTP; Client does not have permissions to send as this sender
[SN6PR1501MB2158.namprd15.prod.outlook.com]
This can happen, for example, when user rss@netcellent.com tries to send an email, and the account used for authentication with Microsoft is emk@netcellent.com. Microsoft Outlook 365 thinks this is a security violation and blocks this email. So what do we do? There are typically two solutions to address this:
- Set up individual user's SMTP settings.
- Configure the Outlook 365 mailbox delegation send as list to include user emk@netcellent.com.
Set Up Individual User's SMTP Settings
You may set up individual user's SMTP settings to override the default SMTP settings in EL800CF. To do so, you need to bring up Elliott V8 and click on the “Setup” icon on the tool bar in Elliot Control Center. In the setup window, go to the Misc. tab and click on the “Email Settings...” button. See sample screen below:
In the Email Preferences window, choose "SMTP" and click on "Use this server." Then enter the proper account information to match this window login user. See sample screen below:
As you can see, the sent from email address on the top matches the account information on the bottom of this screen. This will resolve the permission error. Keep in mind that the top email address comes from the Elliott password setup, which is determined by your Elliott login. The bottom portion is part of your Windows registery, which is determined by your Windows login. To make sure this works, you also need to make sure you login with your own user ID in Elliott in order to match your Windows login. If you login with some other Elliott user ID, while authenticating your that email address matches your Windows login, the STMP email will still fail and send a permission error.
To implement this solution, you will need to instruct (or help) each of your Elliott users to login to their Windows account, and configure Email preferences in Elliott individually. Make certain the user runs the "Test email" to make sure it works.
Enable Outlook 365 Mailbox for "Authenticated SMTP"
It is possible SMTP authentication method is disabled. You can either enable that with PowerShell or go to Exchange on-line admin to enable the mail box to use "Authenticated SMTP". See the following YouTube Video for details:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB8MSZlFZR8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB8MSZlFZR8
Configure Outlook 365 Mailbox Delegation Send As
With the above example that uses emk@netcellent.com as the default authenticated account, you can also go to the Outlook 365 admin area to configure the system so that emk@netcellent.com is allowed to send as any user. This is a workaround/alternate solution. Even though you will have to add emk@netcellent.com to each individual user, the process is no more tedious then the previous solution.
To use this solution, you first need to login as the admin user on the Microsoft Outlook or Office 365 website. You will go to the Admin area. In the Admin, choose Users. Click on each user and expand the "Mail Settings" area. Then click on "Edit Exchange Properties." See sample screen below:
To use this solution, you first need to login as the admin user on the Microsoft Outlook or Office 365 website. You will go to the Admin area. In the Admin, choose Users. Click on each user and expand the "Mail Settings" area. Then click on "Edit Exchange Properties." See sample screen below:
Then in mailbox delegation, add "emk@netcellent.com" to the "Send As" list. See sample screen below:
This means that the system will permit an email sent-from address to appear as "Roger Sueng" (rss@netcellent.com), even though the authenticated user is emk@netcellent.com.
Outlook or Office 365 Email Message Limit
Outlook or Office 365 set limit on the number of emails can be sent to prevent emailing spamming. The common limitation that will affec Elliott's operation is that Outlook or Office 365 current allow 30 email messages per minute per user. This can be a real problem when you try to send mass email in Elliott, or using PDF PostOffice. See following article for more detail on the limitation:
To avoid this this type of limitation, you can look at tranasctional email solutions provider like Sendgrid, Mailchimp...etc. for your outgoing SMTP emails.
EMK