Aquamail as exchange client

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Re: setting the From header is easy to do... wonder if it's going to cause me more grief than good

Tried it with an alias (an email address at another mail service) already configured in Office 365 web mail and available there for sending.

Attempting to send from the app failed - Office 365 server did not recognize the alias as a valid "from" address, and did not send the message.

And so that's where it's at. Nowhere.

Just setting the From header doesn't work - unless / until Microsoft makes it possible (if they do).

[dennosius]

Hi Kostya,

thanks for your reply.

You are right, it is indeed impossible to send emails from an external email address. This does neither work from Outlook (Desktop) nor any other device. I'm even surprised that you can do this in OWA, I can't (maybe because I'm using O365 Business in the special German cloud). I thought this only works with the free Outlook.com/Live account.

Also, you cannot send emails from "Alias" adresses configured in the general account settings. The aliases work for incoming mail only.

The only way to send emails from other (internal, i.e. within the same O365 organization) email addresses is the one with shared mailboxes that I described.

But this does work fine, even in AuqaMail, when I change the email address manually (and also manually configure an Exchange account instead of O365, so I can configure a username independent from the email address).

Let's say, my user account is first.last@domain.com, and I want to send an email as info@domain.com, then info@domain.com is a shared mailbox where first.last has "Send as" rights to. In AquaMail, I can add an Exchange account with info@domain.com as email address and Exchange login credentials from first.last. Emails are sent perfectly well "from" info@domain.com

So I assume that it really is as easy as changing the from field, because that's essentially what I do when I change the email address in AquaMail manually, right?

The only downside for you would be that you may receive support requests from people that don't understand O365's limitations in that repect.

Edit: If you can provide me with a test APK where the Identities feature is enabled for Exchange and O365 accounts, I'd be happy to try.

[Kostya Vasilyev]

So I assume that it really is as easy as changing the from field, because that's essentially what I do when I change the email address in AquaMail manually, right?

The only downside for you would be that you may receive support requests from people that don't understand O365's limitations in that repect.

Thank you for the explanation.

- Sending "from" an alias, even if it's an external address, is now possible in Office 365 web mail.

I've actually done this before trying it with Aqua (which did not work). This is a recent addition.

- The shared mailboxes trick.

Nice but - and this is really the issue - you're right, support, people trying to use it, complaining that it doesn't work...

I remember someone else posting "very special" instructions for yet another way to do aliases in Exchange, I think they involved a distribution list (?).

Same thing again, just too complicated for the average user who's going to "long press here" and "tap there" just because those menu options are there in the app.

And so we're again without a universal solution that would "just work" (the way things usually do for Internet Mail accounts).

[dennosius]

There are actually 50 shades of "Groups" (distribution lists, shared mailboxes...) in O365 and I don't get all the differences. Maybe other variants work as well. And, of course, it does work between regular accounts (when a secretary writes emails for their boss, or an employee for another one on leave).

Maybe the problem of people not understanding it can be solved by renaming the feature. I believe "mailbox permissions" is the offical MS feature description. And/or make a checkbox in account settings that enables it. I also would commit myself to writing a How-To here in the forums.

Because, on the other hand, the feature would be really unique to AquaMail. Not even Nine offers that, and I believe I've also tried almost each and every other Exchange-compatible Android mail client.

[arbit12]

Weighing in again as the person who started this :-)

Kostya, I think (not sure though), that right now the alias on Office365 works only on the web for Outlook.com, not through the mobile clients. That _might_ be why it didn't work with Aquamail.


Coming back to Exchange. Quite a lot of stuff has recently happened for exchange in Aquamail, and supporting distribution lists etc would be a logical step. As mentioned by dennosius above, it would also be the only android exchange client with this feature.

Since there was a question mark about the Distribution List, taking a short detour. A DL is basically a mailing list. Eg an id called alias@xyz.com with 3 members. Any mail addressed to alias@xyz.com is automatically forwarded to the 3 members - there is no mailbox called alias@xyz.com. Related concepts are Shared mailbox (which keeps the mail in a separate mailbox called alias@xyz.com which the 3 members can access), and Groups (which again keeps the mail in alias@xyz.com, but also add a sharepoint site, planner, calendar etc).  DLs are (for now) the lightest, and also don't need a separate mailbox to be setup or accessed by the client.

The original request was for O365 for business (eg contoso.com, closer to exchange), and not O365 consumer (eg outlook.com, closer to internet mail).

Actually, the process for O365 (business) is not that different from Gmail or other internet mail

1. Set up alias account to send from : Internet: set up account. Exchange: Set up DL
2. Give Send As permissions: Required in both
3. Decide whether to ask for which account to send from or to send from the recieving account: Required for both.

The only real difference is that in internet mail, most people would do it themselves as admin, while in Office 365 (corporate), the corporate admin might be required.

Would be great if, as requested in the post above, there could be a test apk, which has 2 features for Exchange accounts (like the identities for IMAP).
1. Add alias names (or more accurately, DL names)
2. Replace the From in the outgoing mail with the email id of the incoming mail when coming through a DL.

All the server side setup would be done by the testers.

To avoid confusion,
1. Instead of identities, we can call them DLs or Groups?
2. Maybe like Gmail and Office 365 accounts, there could be a category called O365 for Business

At least we can test the concept. If it does work, it would be really useful for work emails, and the communication / support can be thought through before sending it to production.

[Kostya Vasilyev]

@arbit12

Re: corporate / personal

My Office 365 subscription is "corporate" not "personal" - with a custom domain and all.

And yet I was able to add a Yahoo account and use it as an alias for collecting *and* sending mail from Office 365 web mail.

The sending is a recent addition, I believe.

And yes it didn't work when I tried sending a message through the EWS protocol with a different From header.

Re:  the process for O365 (business)

Yes I think that's the setup I've heard about before (maybe from you even).

Thank you for all the details. All I can do is write them down for the future.

The server setup still seems complicated - but the main thing is, we've got a bunch of other work going on right now, so I don't even have the time to investigate this (right now).

[arbit12]

Sure. Thanks for considering it.

One clarification though. Was talking about an alias on the same domain and not a connected account.

Sent from my SM-N915G using Tapatalk

[arbit12]

There are actually 50 shades of "Groups" (distribution lists, shared mailboxes...) in O365 and I don't get all the differences. Maybe other variants work as well. And, of course, it does work between regular accounts (when a secretary writes emails for their boss, or an employee for another one on leave).

Maybe the problem of people not understanding it can be solved by renaming the feature. I believe "mailbox permissions" is the offical MS feature description. And/or make a checkbox in account settings that enables it. I also would commit myself to writing a How-To here in the forums.

Because, on the other hand, the feature would be really unique to AquaMail. Not even Nine offers that, and I believe I've also tried almost each and every other Exchange-compatible Android mail client.

dennosius, have a workaround which works pretty well for me on O365 business.

Server side
1. Make a DL with the alias name. Only one member, the primary email.
2. Give primary account Send As rights to the DL.

Aquamail side
1. Connect to my primary mail as IMAP. Set up an identity using the DL name.
2. Add another account, again connecting to primary email,  but as O365. On this one, keep email sync to minimum but sync calendar and contacts.

Works fine. I have over 5 aliases, all of which work perfectly for email in just the one IMAP account.

The exchange account takes care of the calendar and contacts in the background, and I never really open it.

Sent from my SM-N915G using Tapatalk

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Re: One clarification though. Was talking about an alias on the same domain and not a connected account.

Yes I understood that.

[dennosius]

I just wanted to ask for any updates on this?

Is there anything I can do (more) to support this feature?