How to setup automated email queues with Microsoft CRM online and Office 365

In this article.  We’ll look at creating queues in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online through Office 365.

The end result we are trying to achieve here:

• Send an email to a support mailbox, hosted on Office 365 and receive this on CRM online as a queue item in a “Support” Queue

Note: We are not setting delegate permissions or anything as such for the email router in this tutorial.  This tutorial is to get our qualifying criteria to work!

I’m going to assume that you already have a Microsoft Online Services account set-up for your company with Office 365 and CRM Online subscriptions loaded, thus you should be here:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I created two users for this demo.  An Admin account, and a support user. (Mailbox that will receive my support emails)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Right, let’s get this show on the road.

Step 1 (CRM Configuration):

Login to CRM, and go to SETTINGS / BUSINESS MANAGEMENT / QUEUES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click on the “New” button to create the new Queue.

Set the following field properties:

• Queue Name: Support (Or whatever you want to call your queue)

• Email address: The email address of the mailbox you will use in Office 365 to receive your support mails.

• Convert to Email Activities: All Email Messages

• Email access type – incoming: E-mail Router

• Email access type – Outgoing: E-mail Router

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once Saved, you need to approve the email address for the queue.  To do this, click on the newly created queue and click “Approve E-mail”.   You will be presented with a dialog box where you click on ok.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 2: (CRM E-mail router configuration manager config)

Next, startup the E-mail router configuration manager which can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/download/details.aspx?id=27818

Note:  You can install this on any pc.

What we need to achieve here is the following:

• Create an Incoming Profile (Tell CRM which mailbox to COLLECT mail from to change to queue items)

• Create an Outgoing Profile (Tell CRM which mailbox to use to SEND mail)

In the Configuration Profiles Tab, click “New”

To set our Incoming profile, populate the following fields:

• Profile Name: Support_Incoming (or whatever you’d like to call it)

• Direction: Incoming

• E-mail Server Type: ExchangeOnline

• Check the box for Use Autodiscover

• Access Credentials: Other Specified

• Username: your support mailbox email address (In this demo, mine is support@testlabsca.onmicrosoft.com)

• Password: your password for your support mailbox.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click OK,

Create another new profile (Now for outgoing) by clicking “New” with the following properties

• PROFILE NAME: SUPPORT_OUTGOING (OR WHATEVER YOU’D LIKE TO CALL IT)
• DIRECTION: OUTGOING
• E-MAIL SERVER TYPE: EXCHANGEONLINE
• CHECK THE BOX FOR USE AUTODISCOVER
• ACCESS CREDENTIALS: OTHER SPECIFIED
• USERNAME: YOUR SUPPORT MAILBOX EMAIL ADDRESS (IN THIS DEMO, MINE IS SUPPORT@TESTLABSCA.ONMICROSOFT.COM)
• PASSWORD: YOUR PASSWORD FOR YOUR SUPPORT MAILBOX.
• ACCESS TYPE: DELEGATE ACCESS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you click Ok, you should now be left with the following two profiles, or something similar:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next, click on the “Deployments” Tab, and click “New”

for this you will need your organization unique name on CRM online, so to get this, pop back to the CRM Online page, and go to:

SETTINGS / CUSTOMIZATIONS / DEVELOPER RESOURCES

Your unique organization name will be in the first block. Write this down or copy it somewhere.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now pop back to your email router config, and in the new profile screen, populate the following fields:

• DEPLOYMENT: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server: By default, the url there will be https://dev.crm.dynamics.com/ which is for on-premises exchange servers.  You need to change this url to https://disco.crm.dynamics.com/
• Access Credentials: Enter a username and password the configuration manager can use to authenticate to your CRM online account.  This needs to be an administrator account.
• Incoming Configuration Profile: (Select the incoming profile created)
• Outgoing configuration profile: (Select the outgoing profile created)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the end it should look like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once complete you can click on the 3rd tab called “Users, Queues and Forward Mailboxes”.  Click on the “Load Data” button.

If your credentials you entered in the deployment profile was correct, you should see your queue that you created listed, like so:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your configuration should have picked up the profiles you created.  To test this, click “Test Access”, whereby if all your configurations are ok, you should get the following screen:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once your tests complete successfully, you can click on “Publish”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s it!

Now let’s test our configuration by sending an email to the support box, to see if we get queue items in our Support Queue

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once sent, let’s check if we’ve got a support queue item.

Remember to change your Queue Items view to “All Items .  The items aren’t assigned to anyone yet, so you will not see the item if your view is on the default “Items I am working on”.  Also change your queue drop down to “All Queues” or the support queue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see, our queue items are there (I sent one from Gmail, and one from internal)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This concludes the tutorial.  If you have any questions, please comment.

Next post we will look at automatically creating Cases for emails sent to the support box, and replying to the client with an appropriate email and “ticket number”

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