Configuring KACE SMA appliance for email connectivity to Office 365 (4255145)

This article is reported to work for most customers.  If after using this article to set up email connectivity to Office 365 you continue to have issues sending and receiving e-mails though the KACE SMA, we recommend that you contact your Office 365 support to continue troubleshooting.

Be aware that Microsoft has started disabling POP3 on its tenants, so this may not work anymore unless an extension was requested. Details here. It's recommended to setup OAuth2 instead, instructions are here.

You do not configure Office 365 as you would a locally hosted Exchange presence. Instead you will be configuring SPOP access as explained in this document.

As an initial setup in Office 365, you will want to ensure there are multiple email accounts configured for your KACE appliance depending on the amount of queues in use. These should be full standard mailboxes accounts and not shared mailboxes or just contacts. You will be using one email account for your network settings, and one per helpdesk queue.

For the purposes of this document, an SMTP server account of kbox@BCS036.onmicrosoft.com and a helpdesk account of helpdesk@BCS036.onmicrosoft.com are being used.

KACE Appliance Configuration

1. Go to the KACE WEB UI and click Settings > Control Panel > Network Settings.
2.  Check on Enable SMTP Server and type in smtp.office365.com (Server)
3.  Type in  SMTP Login / Password and type in the relevant email address and password for the kbox mailbox that you previously created on your Office 365 server.
4. Make sure the port is 587.
5. Click on the check box to Enable Service Desk POP3 Server.
6. Click on Save and the server will reboot.
7.  Once the server reboots then go to Service Desk>Configuration>Queues and open the relevant Service Desk Queue. 

Within the Queue configuration, the typical settings will be as follows:

1. Make the Alt Email Address reflect the helpdesk email address you previously created on your Office 365 server. 
2. For POP3 Server you will typically use outlook.office365.com
3. For POP3 User / Password provide the credentials you use on Office 365 to log onto the Help Desk account. 
4. For the SMTP User / Password provide the credentials you use on Office 365 to log onto the helpdesk account. 
5. For SMTP Server the value is typically going to be smtp.office365.com and the port is 587.

NOTE: ALL SMTP/POP addresses MUST be lowercase in the SMA configuration.

NOTE:  There will be occasions when a company using Office 365 will not be using these new default values.  If in doubt then use the following steps to verify the POP3 and SMTP server values. 

With these steps in place both inbound and outbound mail should flow between the KACE appliance and Office 365.  Since a firewall will typically intervene, you will need to ensure outbound ports 587 and 110 are open from the KACE appliance to the Internet. If you are using SSL on your KACE appliance, POP3 will use port 995.

One last consideration is whether you want the KACE appliance to accept emails from unknown users, or only from accounts with a matching email address.

By default the KACE appliance does NOT accept emails from unknown users.  If you wish to change that then go to Queue Configuration  and click on the Accept Email from unknown users check box.

The port 443 (https) to login.microsoft.com needs to be open in the firewall.

Important Note: After the configuration process has been completed is recommended to run the appropriate testing to evaluate if the e-mail flow operates as expected. Please take in consideration run a realistic test; for example make use of unique ticket submitter and ticket owner.

Also remember, when tickets are submitted or modified through the Administrator Console or User Console, the ticket submitter does not receive an email confirmation. However, other users associated with the ticket, such as the Owner, Approver, CC List, and Category CC, receive email notifications as specified in the Email on Events section of the Queue Detail page. For more information about email notifications please refer to "About email notifications" (Administrator Guide).
 

Setting up office 365 to get/send email requires a valid MX record.

• Office 365 MX record (4369259)