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The CRM e-mail router is available for implementation with Exchange On-Premise, POP3 accounts, and Exchange Online.  In this article my focus is on implementing the E-mail Router with Exchange Online. 

For additional information regarding other available options and supporting resources, please see my article,

CRM Online E-mail Router – Yes We Do That!

So let’s get started.  To begin, you’ll want to ensure you understand the hardware / software requirements.  These were pulled directly from the E-mail Router Installation Guide:

Next, you’ll want to consider a few configuration options and make decisions:

Incoming Mail Options

You have a couple of options regarding the Incoming Mail Profile; do you want to have the e-mail router handle both outgoing and incoming or do you want to use the Forward Mailbox for Incoming.  The benefit for using the Forward Mailbox is that you have only one point of failure to troubleshoot incoming mail issues, the Forward Mailbox.  If each user is configured to use the E-mail Router to manage incoming e-mail then you might have to troubleshoot issues at the Outlook user mailbox level.  The downside to this approach for some is it requires an additional mailbox setup for the Forward Mailbox and Rule Deployment to manage the forwarding mail process.  The upside is that it scales well as organizations grow.

Additionally, you’ll need to decide if you are going to setup one Incoming profile for each user or use one Incoming Profile for all.  The most common approach is to use one Incoming Profile for all users.  If that is the choice you make then the Access Credentials you choose to use for this profile must have full access to all user mailboxes.  If you choose to setup one Incoming Profile for each user then you will need to know the Exchange Online password for each user.

Outgoing Mail Options

The option you want to focus on for the Outgoing Mail Profile is do you want to use an Administrator level account for Access or setup each user account.  Generally, you’ll want to use an Administrator level account for Access rather than setting up individual Outgoing profiles.  An Administrator level account assumes full rights to all user’s mailboxes.  There will be some important items to pay close attention to when setting up this configuration to include a required call to Exchange Online support to complete a few configuration steps which I’ll highlight later in the article.

After you’ve identified the best configuration options for your organization and completed the preparation work required for the options you selected, you are ready to install the e-mail router.

E-mail Router Installation

One of the best resources I’ve found for a detailed guide on installing the E-mail Router for CRM Online and Exchange Online is the article written a few years ago on the Dynamics CRM Team Blog,

Configure Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online E-mail Router with Exchange Online

Although some of this will be a repeat of the above article, the following steps are from a ‘real-world’ installation, so here we go:

 

First, ensure your CRM users have been configured to use the E-mail Router. 

UserImage

Now we are ready to install and test the E-mail Router

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Outgoing Profile

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Incoming Profile

IncomingProfile

Deployment Profile

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OrgUniqueName

deploymentProfile

Test the E-mail Router

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Forward Mailbox

If you plan to use the Forward Mailbox to manage incoming mail, select the Forward Mailbox tab and select the New button.  Enter a Name for the forward mailbox, enter the mailbox address for the forward mailbox and select Incoming. 

ForwardMailbox

E-mail Router Service

In closing, the E-mail Router Service plays an important role in ensuring the everything works as expected.  Therefore, it is important that you set the logon for the E-mail Router service to a logon that has sufficient rights.  To do this, ensure that the user account that is running the E-mail Router Service is a member of the Active Directory directory service PrivUserGroup security group.