SUMMARY

The MAPI connector for Microsoft Outlook has a "Detect Settings" button when configuring a new account. This button makes it easier for a user to configure their account by retrieving the necessary account options from the server with just an email address and password. The tests it performs are very similar to how email clients such as Microsoft Outlook do autodiscovery. In order for this button to be effective, autodiscovery needs to be configured on the server.

Note: In order for the autodiscovery to work, the users email address has to match their username. So their mailbox name needs to match the local part of the email address and the postoffice needs to match the domain.

DETAIL

The tests are performed in the following order (assuming example.com is the domain in the email address). As soon as the client gets a result, it stops and fills out the details. So you only need to configure your server to return autodiscover results for one of these tests:

1. A DNS SRV lookup on _autodiscover._tcp.example.com is done to get the host name of the server supplying the autodiscover results. The returned hostname is used then for accessing https://hostname/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml and http://hostname/autodiscover/autodiscover/xml.
2. Retrieve https://example.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml
3. Retrieve http://example.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml
4. Retrieve https://autodiscover.example.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml
5. Retrieve http://autodiscover.example.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml
6. Retrieve https://autodiscover.example.com/autodiscover.xml
7. Retrieve http://autodiscover.example.com/autodiscover.xml
8. A DNS SRV lookup on _imaps._tcp.example.com to get the IMAP settings. If this fails, then the lookup for IMAP access is done on _imap._tcp.example.com. Then a DNS SRV lookup on _submission._tcp.example.com to get the SMTP submission settings. Using this option for autodiscovery uses the email address as "Your name" instead of the one from the mailbox details on the server.

MailEnable Protocols website configuration:

1. Navigate within Windows to: Control Panel > Administrative tools > Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager and open IIS.
2. Expand IIS root node > Sites
3. Right click on "MailEnable Protocols" and select "Edit Bindings".
4. Click "Add" and select "Type" and "http" and select the assigned IP address and set to port 80.
5. Specify the host name as: autodiscover.example.com.
6. Click OK.
7. If you have an SSL certificate for autodiscover.example.com then you can add a https binding with port set to 443.
8. Click OK.
9. Click Close.

MailEnable domain level "Autodiscover" configuration:

1. Open the MailEnable Administration console.
2. Navigate to: Messaging Manager > Post Offices > [Postoffice] > Domains
3. Right click on the domain in the right hand pane window and select Properties from the popup menu.
4. Select the "Autodiscover" tab.
5. The "Detect" button can be used to best guess the host name and port settings for each of the available mail server protocols. The detection process will perform DNS queries to best guess the host names. Check each result to verify that it is correct, as these are the values which will be sent to Outlook to be used.
6. Once you have verified the settings for the domain click OK to close the window.

As well as domain level bindings, you do have the option to configure the autodiscovery server wide. To access these settings, in the administration program, expand the Servers branch, right click on the localhost icon and select Properties from the popup menu. Click the Autodiscovery tab to access the server wide settings.