Connecting Microsoft Exchange

The Exchange connector pulls mail from a Microsoft mailbox directly, without a forwarding rule, and needs an administrator's consent once.

The Exchange connector pulls mail from a Microsoft mailbox directly, without a forwarding rule, and needs an administrator's consent once.

Connect it

1. Open Admin Center, then Channels, then Talk and email, then Email.
2. Choose to connect a Microsoft Exchange account.
3. Sign in with the account that holds the support mailbox and grant the permissions requested.
4. Confirm which address it applies to.
5. Send a test message from outside your organisation.

Check three things before you start

• Exchange Online. The connector works with Exchange Online only. An on-premises Exchange Server is not supported, and no amount of consent changes that.
• The address is not in use anywhere else in Zendesk. It cannot also be a forwarding address, and it cannot exist as an agent or an end user in your account. A support address that has been emailing you for years is usually already an end user, which is the common reason a setup that should work does not.
• An administrator who can consent. See below.

The permission step needs an administrator

Microsoft tenants usually require an administrator to consent to a third-party application. Where the sign-in appears to work and then stops, that consent is the missing piece.

Worth arranging with whoever manages your tenant before you start, rather than discovering it halfway through.

Use a shared or service mailbox

Not a person's mailbox. When that person leaves, their account is disabled and your support mail stops arriving, with no error anywhere in Zendesk.

Two things it does not do

Personalised email replies do not work through the Exchange connector, a Microsoft API limitation rather than a setting. And side conversations do not use the connector at all; they go their own way. If either of those is part of how your team works, weigh that before choosing this route.

Outgoing is separate

The connector brings mail in. Replies still go out through Zendesk under your domain, so SPF and DKIM records are needed exactly as they would be otherwise.

If your organisation requires outbound relay

Some organisations need all outgoing mail to pass through their own infrastructure. That is what the authenticated SMTP connector is for, and it is a separate configuration from bringing mail in.

The limits per mailbox

Where a busy support address sits against them: 30 emails a minute out, with retries for up to two hours, 25 a minute in, and 50 MB as the largest message including attachments.

Two that are easy to read past. There is a second 50 MB figure, and it is not the same limit: besides the cap on one message, a mailbox may send 50 MB per five minutes in total. And the recipient limit below is shared with every other application connected to that mailbox, so Zendesk is not the only thing spending it.

See also

• Setting up the authenticated SMTP connector
• Setting up SPF, DKIM and DMARC
• Access denied when setting up forwarding in Office 365