This guide is for users of Outlook who do not use an Exchange server, Microsoft365 or Google email account.
How can I tell if I'm using Exchange?
The main way to tell if you're using Exchange as your mail server (from Outlook) is to look at your accounts.
From the Accounts page, you'll be able to see a list of your accounts; if there's one there with "Exchange" in its title, you're using Exchange. If not, odds are you're using a POP3 or IMAP email server, which is great news.
For non-Exchange Server Users of Outlook
For non-Exchange users, there are a few options for capturing both incoming and outgoing emails.
Incoming Email
NB: This document is going to assume you're using a POP3 or IMAP mail server for your email. If you have another email configuration, please contact support@accelo.com today and we'll help you get incoming email going on your own configuration.
Option A: Create a New Message Rule
Different mail server and hosting companies will have their own method of configuring email forwarding, but rest assured that almost all of them can provide this functionality. It is mostly a case of just asking for access to the control panel, either from your internal IT staff, or from your hosting/email company.
Hints for determining your email server
If you don't know who provides your email/hosting service, there are a couple of tricks for helping to work it out.
1. Looking at the mail account name
Using the technique above in "How can I tell if I'm using Exchange", see if the name of the account gives you any hints to who's providing it for you.
2. Looking at the incoming email server
Picking up at the end of the "How can I tell if I'm using Exchange" section above, double-click on your default account. Depending on your version of Outlook, you might need to click on a Servers tab.
The secret is to look for the "Incoming Mail Server", especially if the Account Type is POP3. The incoming email server - in this case of the above screenshot, smtp.hostingcompany.com - will help you work out who is hosting your email - in this case, www.hostingcompany.com - and from there, you need to try and contact them to try and get access to the necessary control panel(s) to get your email forwarded to your Accelo address.
NB: When you choose to forward your email from your mail server's control panel, make sure you choose to "forward and retain a copy on the server" or similar if you have such an option; this ensures that your emails both go into Accelo and also end up at your desktop. If you turn on forwarding, and emails stop coming through into Outlook, then all of your emails are being sent into Accelo and potentially lost; make sure you don't do this, and whenever you make a change, test it quickly by sending yourself an email, or even better, getting someone external to send you an email (friend, family, or a webmail account you have access to).
Option B: Forwarding email from Outlook itself using Rules
If you can't get in to set up forwarding at the Mail Server level, you can still set up forwarding directly from Outlook. The only downside of this is that the forwarding of messages only occurs when Outlook is online and receiving email messages; if you're offline and mail is queuing up at your mail server, it won't be being forwarded to Accelo.
Capturing incoming email into Accelo 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, Accelo 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 Accelo capture system. Using this method, the emails remain in the user's inbox/mailbox, but they also get forwarded across to Accelo 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.
Incoming email is handled in Accelo by forwarding emails you receive over to a special email address tied to each user account. For example:
If your Accelo domain is demo.accelo.com
And your user's username is richard
Then the address to forward incoming email to is richard@demo.accelo.com
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.
The next step is to add some actions to your rule - this is where you tell it to forward the emails to Accelo.
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 Accelo.
Once on this screen, manually type in the email address that matches the format of [yourusername]@[yourdomain].accelo.com into the "To" section (as highlighted in red above).
To confirm the format of the address with an example:
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].accelo.com, as shown above.
From here, click on "Next", and enter any exceptions you wish to manually maintain.
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.
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 Accelo.
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 Accelo.
Once you've got the address in Accelo, 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 Accelo should show you an unactioned item on your to-do list from this contact.
Outgoing Email
Capturing Outgoing Email in Accelo is best achieved by using Accelo's servers as your outgoing email server; that way, we take care of the rest. Using us as your outgoing server means you benefit from our systems being configured to automatically BCC all emails from your domain into your own log account, so just by using this email server for all emails that go off-site, you’ll benefit from automatic logging.
To enable the outgoing email settings for your Accelo domain, go to Integrations under your user account, and then scroll down until you see the Outgoing SMTP box.
Hit "Connect", and you'll be presented with a box like the one below. Note, however, that in place of the red text, you'll have details that you can use to configure your mail server.
While different mail clients use different words, you'll probably find the details you need are:
Alternatively, if all of this is Greek to you (and you're not Greek), then relax as we take you through the steps, one at a time.
Step 1 - open your default email account
The first step is to get into your email account settings, as described above in "How can I tell if I'm using Exchange?".
Go to "Tools" and click on "Email Accounts" (previous versions of Outlook just call them "Accounts" or "Account Settings")
Once there, doube click on your default email account from the list.
Step 2 - change your outgoing (SMTP) mail server
Once you've opened your account, go down to the Outgoing or "SMTP" server section, and change the setting to be your Accelo domain, eg, yourcompany.accelo.com.
NB: Before making any changes, however, make sure you note the old SMTP server name, just in case it doesn't work for one reason or another, and you need to change it back.
Once you've made this change in the "Outgoing Server" or SMTP section, click on "Advanced Settings" or "Authentication" buttons.
Step 3: Ensure you're using Authentication
By clicking on "Advanced Settings" and then the "Outgoing Server" tab, or by clicking on "Authentication" or similarly labelled buttons in older versions of Outlook, bring up the box that allows you to enter a username/password combination for your outgoing server.
Once there, tick the checkbox that says you need to log on to use this outgoing server.
NB: The screens in this example are from Outlook 2007, however, the menu locations, fields and screens in previous versions of Outlook are very similar.
Use the username and password provided on the Outgoing SMTP section of the Integrations screen (which you can find by clicking on your own name in the top right, and then choosing "Integrations" from the list).
If you have the option to set the Connection Security/encryption for the Outgoing Server, select STARTTLS.
Step 4: be prepared to change your outgoing port
Before you finish, it is worth noting that a lot of ISPs (the people you connect to the internet through) have disabled outgoing email access via the default SMTP port (like a channel) of 25. As a result, it is a good idea to change the Outgoing Port number to overcome these sorts of restrictions.
By going to the "Advanced" tab, you're able to change the Outgoing Port to 587.
Testing Outgoing Email Capture
Testing the Outgoing Email Capture process is as easy as sending an email to a contact who’s listed in Accelo. Send an email, and then open their company or contact record in Accelo 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 Accelo 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.
If you're unable to send emails at all, then the combination of SMTP server, Username/Password and/or Port Number aren't correct. Given there are so many things in this set of combinations that could be off the mark, it is best if you contact support@accelo.com (or call us if you can't send email!) to work through your configuration challenges.
NB: Accelo lets you control all of the privacy settings on capturing email, and it only captures emails that match contacts in Accelo's database. For more information on Privacy check out our Overview and Privacy Settings pages.