Hosted Exchange

Frequently Asked Questions regarding our Hosted Exchange Email

Exchange Email Security & Archiving

Exchange Email Security & Archiving 150 150 Small Business IT Solutions

Email Security is secure email management that works in the cloud – email threats are removed at the Internet-level, away from your business network. Maximum security, minimum investment of resources. It’s how smart businesses manage email.

Our Hosted Exchange Email Security archiving service ensures secure long-term storage of your business emails in geographically diverse datacentres – this is available as a 1 Year option or 10 year Option on our Hosted Exchange mailbox accounts.

Efficient self-search-and-recover capabilities means quick access to any emails required by you and your staff.

The online control panel lets you securely view and resend emails, even those that have been captured as spam or long-term archived.

Our Email Security anti-spam technology uses sophisticated investigation techniques, including both content and reputation-based scanning, so you get outstanding results

Mobile settings for our Hosted Exchange Mailboxes

Mobile settings for our Hosted Exchange Mailboxes 150 150 Small Business IT Solutions

Generic Mobile settings for our Hosted Exchange Service

Please consult your handset user guide for specific instructions on how to configure your handset.

The mailbox needs to be applied or set-up as a “Microsoft Exchange” account.

Exchange 2010

  • E-mail:  The user’s full email address
  • Server:  cas.messageexchange.com
  • Domain:  At first leave blank, if no connection, then enter: messageexchange.com
  • Username:  The user’s full email address
  • Password:   The user’s mailbox password
  • Use SSL: “ON“

Exchange 2013

  • E-mail:  The user’s full email address
  • Server:  cas.cloudplatform1.com
  • Domain:  At first leave blank, if no connection, then enter: cloudplatform1.com
  • Username:  The user’s full email address
  • Password:  The user’s mailbox password
  • Use SSL: “ON“

Exchange 2016

  • E-mail:  The user’s full email address
  • Server:  activesync.giacomcp.com
  • Domain:  Leave this blank
  • Username:  The user’s full email address
  • Password:  The user’s mailbox password
  • Use SSL: “ON“

 

Setting up your domain to use our Hosted Exchange Service

Setting up your domain to use our Hosted Exchange Service 150 150 Small Business IT Solutions

Updating your DNS to to use our Hosted Exchange Service

In order to use your domain name with our Hosted Exchange Service, you need to make some minor changes to DNS records.

Update your MX Records :

Make sure that your MX records are set to the following :
inboundcluster1.cloudplatform1.com pref/priority 10
inboundcluster2.cloudplatform1.com pref/priority 10
inboundcluster3.cloudplatform1.com pref/priority 20
inboundcluster4.cloudplatform1.com pref/priority 20

Create an Autodiscover Record

autodiscover.yourdomainname.com CNAME autodiscover.cloudplatform1.com TTL (lowest possible)

Create a OWA DNS Record

owa.yourdomainname.com CNAME owa.cloudplatform1.com

Create an SPF DNS Record

include:cloudplatform1.com which should resolve to: v=spf1 include:spf.cloudplatform1.com -all

Creating signatures with Outlook Plugin

Creating signatures with Outlook Plugin 150 150 Small Business IT Solutions

End-user Installation (Signatures Add-in)

The Hosted Exchange Add-in must be downloaded to yours clients PC’s in order for the Email Signature feature to work. We would advise following the below instructions after you have set-up the Email Signature within your Cloud Platform. However, signatures can be updated anytime, as detailed below.
1. Select the correct add-in setup file link for your clients version of Outlook. You can find the add-in links on the homepage of your clients Cloud Platform management portal (to the right hand side of the screen, under the ‘Outlook’ download links). When selected, the add-in download will begin.

PLEASE NOTE: The 32Bit/64Bit options refers to the version of Outlook that is installed and not the operating system.

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2. Upon running the setup, depending on your Operating System, you will be presented with 1 or 2 prerequisites that require downloading before installing the Add-in.  Both of these will require Administrator privileges to install.

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Prerequisites:

  • Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 Full – This will come as standard on Windows 8 and upwards so only earlier versions of Windows will require this, if not already installed. For more information please visit https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=30653 .
  • Visual Studio 2010 Tools for Office Runtime – If a full version of Microsoft Office has been installed this will not require installing. It allows Office Add-ins created with the VSTO platform to run. For more information please visit https://www.microsoft.com/en-GB/download/details.aspx?id=48217 .

Depending on your Operating System on or both of these prerequisites will require a restart. After restarting the installer will pick up from where it left off.

3. Once the prerequisites have been installed (if required) the Hosted Exchange Add-in will be begin installation. Click ‘Next’ to continue.

 

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4. In order to continue installation accept the license agreement and click ‘Next’.

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5. You will then be presented with an option to install the Add-in for “Anyone who uses this computer” (all users) or “Only for me”(current user). To install for all users will require Administrator privileges as indicated by the shield symbol.

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Clicking ‘Next’ will install the Add-in. If ‘Only for me’ is selected you may notice a window pop-up and disappear very quickly – this is a normal part of the installation process.

6. Once the installation has finished click ‘Finish’.

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The next time Outlook is opened the latest signatures for any Hosted Exchange mailbox in Outlook will be downloaded. If this is the first time a signature has been downloaded a prompt will show indicating that a restart of Outlook is required in order to apply the new signature.

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If an update for the add-in is available a new group will appear on the ‘Home’ ribbon in Outlook, with a button to download the latest installer. Run this file to install the latest version of the Hosted Exchange Add-in.

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Creating Email Signatures

Creating Email Signatures 150 150 Small Business IT Solutions

Creating Email Signatures (Cloud Platform)

The instructions below detail how to create your clients Email Signatures from within your Cloud Platform. We would advise completing the below steps before installation of the Signatures add-in on your end-users machine.

The creation of Signatures involves 3 steps:

– Creating the HTML signature
– Creating the Plain Text signature
– Adding addresses to the exclusion list (optional).

Signatures will be applied to Outlook Web App and any Outlook user that has the Hosted Exchange Add-in installed.

1. Click the Exchange tab in the left sidebar and click ‘View clients’. Select the relevant organisation that you wish to add Signatures to.

2. Select the ‘Settings’ tab which can be seen in the bottom half of the screen. Now scroll down to the ‘Email Signatures’ section and click the ‘Manage Signatures’ button. This will take you to the Signature control area.

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PLEASE NOTE: Here you can also download the Signatures Add-in if you wish. Simply select your operating system from the list displayed under the ‘Manage Signatures’ button.

3. Now you will be presented with a list of domains. Select the domain you want to create a signature for and click ‘Next’.

PLEASE NOTE: If a signature already exists for the selected domain you will be given the option to ‘Edit’.

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4. Using the control panel you can now you can create a HTML signature for the selected domain.

In this editor you have 2 options:

– You can enter plain text and the editor will create the HTML mark-up in the background
– Click the ‘Source’ button to directly edit the HTML mark-up

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Address Book Attributes

Both the HTML and Plain Text editors have the ability to insert placeholders for Address Book attributes.

In order to insert an address book attribute, select one from the ‘Insert’ drop down if using the HTML editor or the ‘Select Attribute’ drop down in the plain text editor.

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Selecting a placeholder will insert text into the editor in the format:

%%Name:[DisplayName]%%

The part of the placeholder highlighted here in blue can be changed to anything, whereas the parts highlighted in red must not be changed otherwise the placeholder will not work.

This allows you to change the title of the attribute for example:

%%Name:[DisplayName]%%

Could be changed to:

%%Employee Name – [DisplayName]%%

And in the final signature for the end user it would appear as:

Employee Name – John Smith

If a user does not have a value for the placeholder in their address book entry the whole line will be removed, for example, in the following signature template:

%%Email: [EmailAddress]%%
%%Name: [DisplayName]%%
%%Mobile: [MobileNumber]%%

If a user does not have Display Name set in their address book entry, the line with Display Name would not appear in the signature, as shown below:

Email: john.smith@domain.com
Mobile: 01234 567890

5. Once you have completed the HTML signature click ‘Next’.

6. On the next screen you can edit the plain text signature as instructed. Once you have done completed this, click ‘Next’.

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7. Now you will be taken to the exclusions list.  This feature is used to add email addresses that will not be included in the domain signature. To add an address to the exclusion list type it into the top textbox and click ‘Add’.

In order to remove and address, select the address from the list and click ‘Remove’, which will be in place of the ‘Add’ button once an address is selected.

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Once you have added all excluded email addresses, click ‘Submit’. The signature that you have just created will now be available in your clients Outlook and Outlook Web App (with Hosted Exchange Add-in).