TLS connectors with Office 365

November 6, 2014 Aerocom

OS365TLS

Trying to get your Office 365 Online Exchange Mail to talk to a third party mail partner may seem scary, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Here’s a simple step-by-step to setup outbound/inbound TLS connections with your system.

For a little refresher, TLS (Transport Layer Security) provides message integrity for your connections over the internet to/from Office 365. This is going to enable the databases to talk with total security.

You’re going to be doing all of this in the Exchange Admin Center (EAC), and you’ll need the IP address of your partner’s server.

  1. In the EAC, go to mail flow > connectors. Under Inbound Connectors, click Add Icon to make a new connector.

  2. Enter a name for the connector, and leave Partner checked. For Connection Security, choose Force TLS and specify your partner’s certificate name: (example.com).

  3. Under Domains, click Add Icon to add a domain and give the domain name of your partner organization (example.com) and save it.

  4. Under IP addresses, click Add Icon to add IP addresses (add the provided IP address).

  5. Make sure you hit Save for the dialogue box, and it should appear in the Inbound Connectors list. Make sure ENABLED is checked.

Now we’ll do the same for Outbound connectors…

  1. Under Outbound Connectors, click Add Icon to create a new connector.

  2. Enter a name for your connector, leaving Enable outbound connector and Partner checked.

  3. For Connection Security, specify Trusted Certification Authority or Self-signed certificate depending on whether your partner has a valid certificate issued by a Microsoft-trusted, public certificate authority (CA) or a self-signed certificate. For Outbound Delivery, choose MX record associated with the recipient domain or a smart host capable of delivering to that domain.

  4. Under Domains, click Add Icon to add a domain.

  5. Click Save. The connector appears in the Outbound Connectors list. You can click Edit Icon to change the configuration settings for the connector.

That’s it. Check out this video from Microsoft going through the process…

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