Microsoft Exchange 2007 has seen a number of improvements over previous versions of Exchange, particularly surrounding the ability to create server-wide rules for email forwarding, that makes setting up Email Capture a breeze.

Incoming Email

Incoming emails need to be forwarded to specific capture addresses tied to each user account based on the AffinityLive address and the username of the AffinityLive user.

• AffinityLive domain: demo.affinitylive.com
• AffinityLive login/username: richard
• Address to forward incoming email to: richard@demo.affinitylive.com.

Configuring this rule is generally most easily done using Rules & Alerts via the user's Outlook application, however, you may also need to allow forwarding on a server-wide basis.

Incoming Email Capture with Outlook Rules

Capturing incoming email into AffinityLive requires that each user forward their emails to a specific email address for that user. This way, even if an email is BCC'ed to a user, AffinityLive can still make sense of who it was originally sent to.

In line with this, one of the easiest ways to capture incoming emails is to set up an Outlook message rule for a particular user, that redirects their email to the Affinity capture system. Using this method, the emails remain in the user's inbox/mailbox, but they also get forwarded across to AffinityLive with all their header information intact.

• NB: The version of Outlook doesn't matter a great deal here. Additionally, these rules can be set up via Outlook Web Access to make them client independent.

Step 1: Create a New Message Rule

• NB: The screens in this example are from Outlook 2007, however, the menu locations, fields and screens in previous versions out Outlook are very similar.

Firstly, create a new, blank message rule, firstly by clicking on "Tools" and then"Rules and Alerts".

Once there, choose a "blank" rule that applies whenever email arrives.

There's no need to specify any conditions on the rule; leave all of the check-boxes blank.

Outlook will confirm you really want to do this by asking you whether you're sure. Choose Yes.

Step 2: Redirect emails to AffinityLive

The next step is to add some actions to your rule - this is where you tell it to forward the emails to AffinityLive.

Firstly, choose the Redirect option.

Once you've selected that you want to redirect your email, you need to tell it where to redirect it to. Click on the blue "people or distribution list" to type in the all important email address for your user account in Affinity.

Once on this screen, manually type in the email address that matches the format of [yourusername]@[yourdomain].affinitylive.com into the "To" section (as highlighted in red above).

To confirm the format of the address with an example:

• If your Affinity domain is demo.affinitylive.com
• And your user's username is richard
• Then the address to forward incoming email to is richard@demo.affinitylive.com

From here, click on "OK", and your screen should look just like the one below.

Now your message rule will be configured to redirect all emails when they arrive to [username]@[yourdomain].affinitylive.com, as shown above.

From here, click on "Next", and enter any exceptions you wish to manually maintain.

• NB: AffinityLive lets you control all of the privacy settings on capturing email, and it only captures emails that match contacts in AffinityLive's database. For more information read our Privacy Settings help page.

Click on "Next", and now you're done and the rule is set.

Leave the "turn rule on" box ticked, but DO NOT tick the "Run this rule now on messages..."

Click on "Finish", and you're done with Outlook.

Allowing forwarding in Exchange 2007

Microsoft introduced a new feature in Exchange 2007, which by default stops users from being able to set up email forwarding. This means that all "redirect", "forward" and "forward as attachment" rules you put in Outlook will be ignored by Exchange 2007 until a single checkbox value is changed in the Exchange server interface - and Outlook doesn't even tell you there's a problem! Thanks Microsoft.

If you've set up the forwarding, and you're not seeing incoming emails from clients land in AffinityLive, this is likely the cause.

Step 1: Open up the Exchange Management Console on your Exchange server.

Step 2: Open the first tree element on the left, "Organization Configuration", and then select "Hub Transport".

Step 3: The right hand side window will load. You want to select the domain with the * for "domain". Often, however, this will be the only one.

Step 4: Right click and choose "Properties".

Step 5: Select the second tab, called "Format of original message sent as attachment to journal report:". Yes, this is a silly name: you've found a bug in Exchange 2007.

Step 6: Make sure the 2nd box, "Allow automatic forward" is checked. If it isn't, check it, and hit "OK".

Step 7: Your redirect rules in Outlook should now work, with your emails going into AffinityLive.

 

Testing Incoming Email Capture

Testing the Incoming Email Capture process is best done with the help of someone outside your organisation. If you can't convince one of your clients, suppliers or friends to help you, register for one of the free email accounts at places like Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo.

Once you've identified who is going to send you the test email - it is best to get them to send you one, just so you can be sure - make sure their exact email address is entered in as the email address of a Contact in Affinity.

Remember, the incoming email capture requires an exact match between the email address of the sender of the email, and the email address stored in Affinity.

Once you've got the address in Affinity, send yourself an email from your friend, or via your webmail account, and have a look at the Company or Contact view screen for this Contact. By looking at the activities tab at the bottom of the View screen, you should see - within about 3 minutes - a an activity from this external contact. Additionally, hitting on "To-Do" in the top taskbar of Affinity should show you an unactioned item on your to-do list from this contact.

If you've done all of this, and you're still having trouble, contact our support team via support@hiivesystems.com.

Outgoing Email

Unfortunately, Outlook doesn't allow for rules to be configured on outgoing emails. However, since these emails are going to a single, deployment wide address (rather than a user-specific address), you can very easily set up outgoing forwarding via Exchange using Transport Rules at the Exchange Server, or alternatively you can configure your Exchange Server to use the AffinityLive system as a SmartHost or an Outbound Relay if you'd prefer.

The following instructions take you through the step-by-step methods for supporting outgoing email capture in Exchange 2007.

Option 1 - Transport Rules

1. Create a New Mail Contact

The first step is to create a new Contact in Exchange's directory.

Open the Exchange Management Console, and under "Recipient Configuration" open "Mail Contact".

From this screen, you'll see an option in the left hand panel called "New Mail Contact...". Click on this option to launch the New Mail Contact wizard.

From here, you want to create a new mail contact, called "AffinityLive Log".

Once you've typed in the details as above, you'll want to give it an external email address. Click on the "Edit" button at the bottom.

Type in the log@[your AffinityLive domain]. If your AffinityLive domain is demo.affinitylive.com, type in log@demo.affinitylive.com.

Click OK, and you're done with this part - now it is time to tell Exchange to send its emails to this new Contact.

2. Create a New Transport Rule

Once you've created your mail contact, you're ready to create a new Transport Rule.

In the left hand navigation of the Exchange Management Console, expand "Organisation Configuration" and click on "Hub Transportation". Then click on New Transport Rule.

Once you've opened the Transport Rule wizard, give the rule a name, and then click "Next".

Now you need to create some conditions for your rule. Firstly, limit this rule to send emails only when they come from users Inside the organisation, and click "Next".

Then, make sure you specify the Action, which is to BCC the message to an Address.

Click on "Address", and then select the Contact you created in Step 1 above.

Click "Next", and add in any exceptions that apply to your organisation.

Finally, save the rule, and it will take effect almost instantly.

Option 2 - SmartHost or SMTP Relay Server

While Transport Rules are the recommended solution to forwarding Outbound Emails to AffinityLive, an alternative is to use the AffinityLive servers as a SmartHost or SMTP Relay Server.

The details you need are:

• Server/Host: yourdeployment.affinitylive.com
• Port: 25 or 587
• Username & Password: contact our support team to have a username/password provisioned
• Security: Basic Authentication

 

Testing Outgoing Email Capture

Testing the Outgoing Email Capture process is as easy as sending an email to a contact who's listed in AffinityLive.

Send an email, and then open their company or contact record in AffinityLive and look at the Activities tab down the bottom; you should see a captured version of email there as a an activity.

Troubleshooting

Make sure the email address in AffinityLive exactly matches the email address you're sending to, and also make sure the email address you appear to send your email "from" exactly matches the address stored in your user account.

If in doubt, test the way your "From" email address appears by using a web-based email service like Gmail.

Another potential problem might be related to your Exchange server's DNS or hub transport settings. This is too complicated to debug in this help documentation, however, a couple of suggestions include:

• Try and ping the yourcompany.affinitylive.com address.
  • On the Exchange server, go to "Start" and then "Run" and type in cmd.
  • In the command prompt window, type "ping yourcompany.affinitylive.com". If it shows up an IP address, your DNS is good.
• Have a look in your message logs to see if the server is having trouble sending emails to log@yourcompany.affinitylive.com. Note the error, and email support@hiivesystems.com to get some help debugging it.
• Test manually BCC'ing the log address on a test email out to a Contact who's in AffinityLive; if it appears in the Activity tab under that company/contact, then you've probably made a typo or forgotten to add the email address in creating the new Contact in Step 1.