• Overview
• First steps
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Supported platforms and requirements
• Installation and configuration
  • Creating a CodeTwo Admin Panel account
  • Registering a tenant
  • Configuring the SPF record
  • Configuring Exchange Online connectors
  • Installing and launching the Manage Signatures App
  • Installing the signature preview add-in
    • Centralized deployment
    • Individual deployment
  • Configuration for smart host services
  • How to uninstall the software
• Quick guide
• Tenant management
  • Sent Items Update
  • User AD attributes & Tokens
  • Manage Signatures App users
• Signature management
  • Manage Signatures App
  • Conditions and exceptions
  • Design
    • Editor
    • Template Library
    • Managing signatures in email conversations
  • Signature preview in Outlook
    • Guidelines for new users
    • Previewing signatures in Outlook and Outlook for Mac
    • Previewing signatures in Outlook on the web (OWA)
    • Guidelines for admins
• Integrations
  • Web analytics tools
    • Google Analytics
    • Matomo (formerly Piwik)
    • Woopra
  • One-click surveys
    • Customer Thermometer
    • CrewHu
    • Hively
  • Scheduling tools
• Understanding the program
  • Program's components
  • Signatures and emails sent as / on behalf of other users
• Troubleshooting
  • Signature preview add-in
  • Failed to configure inbound connector
  • Failed to configure outbound connector
  • Failed to configure transport rule
  • Failed to remove inbound connector
  • Failed to remove outbound connector
  • Failed to remove transport rule
• Monitoring and diagnostics
• Licensing
• Knowledge Base
• Feedback

• Program’s homepage

Configuring Exchange Online connectors

When you register a tenant and the provisioning of our services is completed, you are asked to do a few additional steps to finish your tenant's configuration (Fig. 1.). This includes creating and setting up Exchange Online connectors. You can do it later, either automatically or manually, but keep in mind that email signatures will not be added until connectors are correctly configured. Creating an outbound and inbound Exchange Online connector for your tenant is required so that emails sent by your organization can be routed through the CodeTwo Email Azure Service. Additionally, an Exchange Online transport rule needs to be configured for the outbound connector, to specify the scope of senders whose messages will be processed by the service. The CodeTwo Email Azure Service checks these messages against the signature rules you created and stamps them with signatures.

Fig. 1. The additional steps required to finish the configuration of a tenant.

The program allows you to configure Exchange Online connectors automatically or manually. Use the links below to learn more.

• Automatic configuration of Exchange Online connectors
• Manual configuration of Exchange Online connectors

Automatic configuration of Exchange Online connectors

If you decided to configure connectors right away, select the first radio button (Automatically manage my connectors) and click the Configure connectors button displayed on the Next steps page (see Fig. 1.).

The connectors configuration wizard will start (Fig. 3.). The wizard will guide you through automatic configuration of Exchange Online connectors and a transport rule.

Fig. 3. Connectors configuration wizard - step 1.

Click Next to start the configuration and the wizard will ask you to provide your Office 365 global admin credentials (step 2. Login - not shown here). These credentials are necessary because initial authorization via Azure's OAuth 2.0 does not allow any third-party apps to access the connectors' configuration in Office 365 tenants.

In the next step (3. Senders scope) you need to specify senders whose emails will be routed through the CodeTwo Email Azure Service to receive signatures. You can select all AD users or (to avoid excessive usage of licenses) you can limit the scope of senders to members of a particular group in your Office 365 (a distribution list, Office 365 group, or mail-enabled security group; groups hidden from your address book are also available). You also need to decide if you want to apply signatures to emails sent within your organization.

Fig. 4. Configuring the scope of senders.

Note that if you select a group that has other groups nested inside, emails sent by members of the nested groups will also travel through the CodeTwo service.

If you wish to further customize the range of users whose emails will be stamped with signatures, you can do that by creating signature rules (see our Quick guide and articles in the signature management section).

In the last step of the wizard (Fig. 5.), click Configure to auto-configure your Office 365 connectors. You will see the progress in the trace log window.

Fig. 5. The last step of the connectors configuration.

Once this step is complete (Fig. 6.), click Finish.

You can now install and launch the Manage Signatures App to start managing your signature rules. Read this article for guidelines.

Manual configuration of Exchange Online connectors

You can also configure Exchange Online connectors manually in the Exchange admin center of your Office 365. Manual setup might be useful if you have any problems with the connectors' configuration wizard, need non-standard (not available in the wizard) settings, or if you simply prefer to create connectors yourself.

To configure the connectors manually, follow the steps below.

1. Access the mail flow configuration pages in Exchange admin center.
2. Configure the inbound connector for CodeTwo Email Signatures for Office 365.
3. Configure the outbound connector for the program.
4. Configure the transport rule for the outbound connector.

Opening mail flow configuration in Exchange admin center

To manually add your connectors, start with logging in to your Office 365 tenant as administrator. On the Home screen, select Admin (Fig. 7.) to enter your Microsoft 365 admin center (Office 365 admin center).

Fig. 7. Accessing Microsoft 365 admin center.

Enter your Office 365 Exchange admin center via the navigation menu on the left side (Fig. 8.).

Fig. 8. Opening Exchange admin center.

Select mail flow from the menu (Fig. 9.).

Fig. 9. Accessing mail flow configuration pages in Exchange admin center.

Now you have to configure the mail flow configuration pages. The whole procedure is described in details in the sections below. In a nutshell, you will need to add two connectors (Fig. 10.) and a transport rule:

• The inbound connector will accept processed emails coming from the CodeTwo Email Azure Service. Learn how to configure the inbound connector.
• The outbound connector will forward your emails to the service. Learn how to configure the outbound connector.
• The transport rule will be responsible for filtering emails to be processed by the CodeTwo Email Azure Service. The rule also helps to avoid processing loops and signature duplicates. Learn how to configure the transport rule.

Fig. 10. CodeTwo connectors in Exchange admin center.

Configuration of the inbound connector

First, create an inbound connector on the connectors tab (see Fig. 10.). Click the plus (+) button to create a new connector. On the pop-up page (Fig. 11.), select From: Your organization's email server, To: Office 365.

Fig. 11. Inbound connector configuration.

On the next page (Fig. 12.), enter the following name: CodeTwo Inbound Connector 2.0 and make sure that the Turn it on and Retain internal Exchange email headers (recommended) checkboxes are both enabled (selected).

Fig. 12. Inbound connector configuration.

On the last page (Fig. 13.), select the first radio button and provide the domain name as follows:

 [your unique subdomain name].smtp.codetwo.online – if you are a global Office 365 user
 [your unique subdomain name].de-smtp.codetwo.online – if you are an Office 365 Germany user         

Fig. 13. Inbound connector configuration.

Click Next and then Save to finish the configuration.

Configuration of the outbound connector

Next, create an outbound connector via the plus (+) button (see Fig. 10.). On the pop-up page (Fig. 14.), select From: Office 365, To: Your organization's email server.

Fig. 14. Outbound connector configuration.

On the next page, enter the following name: CodeTwo Outbound Connector and make sure that the Turn it on and Retain internal Exchange email headers (recommended) checkboxes are both enabled (selected), as shown in Fig. 15.

Fig. 15. Outbound connector configuration.

In the next step (Fig. 16.), choose the first option (Only when I have a transport rule set up...).

Fig. 16. Outbound connector configuration.

On the next page (Fig. 17.), add the following CodeTwo smart host address:

 [your unique subdomain name].smtp.codetwo.online – if you are a global Office 365 user
 [your unique subdomain name].de-smtp.codetwo.online – if you are an Office 365 Germany user         

Fig. 17. Outbound connector configuration.

In the next step, configure the options as shown in Fig. 18. and make sure that you provide the address:

*.codetwo.com

as the domain name on the certificate. Proceed to the connector validation step by clicking Next.

Fig. 18. Outbound connector configuration.

Finally, you have to validate the outbound connector (Fig. 19.) by typing any external (not hosted in Office 365) email address. Click Validate and - after successful validation - click Save to finish the configuration of the outbound connector.

Fig. 19. Validation of the outbound connector.

401 4.5.4 Invalid arguments - possible version mismatch [VE1EUR01FT009.eop-EUR01.prod.protection.outlook.com]

Configuration of the CodeTwo Exchange transport rule

Once you're done with connectors, you need to create a new transport rule that will specify senders whose emails will be processed by the CodeTwo Email Azure Service.

This configuration corresponds to the Senders scope step during the automatic configuration of connectors (learn more earlier in this article). You can specify the following scopes of senders:

• all of your Active Directory users,
• only selected users or users belonging to a specific group or groups,
• all or selected AD users, but excluding internal messages.

Configuration of the transport rule for all AD users

To add and configure a new transport rule for all AD users (including emails sent internally in your organization), switch to the rules tab. Use the plus (+) button to create a new rule (Fig. 20.).

Fig. 20. Adding a new transport rule for the program's outbound connector.

Configure the rule in the following way:

• Type the following name: CodeTwo Exchange transport rule
• Click the More options... link at the bottom to show all configuration settings.
• In the Apply this rule if... section, add the following condition: The sender... > is external/internal. Select Inside the organization
• In the Do the following... section, add the following action: Redirect the message to... > the following connector > CodeTwo Outbound Connector
• In the Except if... section, add the following three exceptions:
  • The sender... > address matches any of these text patterns... > specify the following phrase: <>
  • The message properties... > include the message type > select the following message type: Calendaring
  • A message header... > matches these text patterns > specify the following header name:
    X-CodeTwoProcessed and enter the following text pattern: true

Leave the other options with their default settings, except for these fields:

• Defer the message if rule processing doesn't complete - must be enabled (selected)
• Match sender address in message - change to Header or envelope

Review your settings - compare them with Fig. 21. and make sure your rule looks exactly the same.

Fig. 21. The correct configuration of the CodeTwo Exchange transport rule for all users.

The created transport rule is applied to both outgoing and internal messages. If you do not want to add signatures to emails sent between the users inside your tenant, you need to specify an additional condition, as described in this section.

Configuration of the transport rule for selected users or groups

If you want to add a transport rule that limits your users to a particular group in your Office 365, start with configuring a transport rule for all users, as described earlier in this article. If all the settings are exactly as in Fig. 21., add another condition in the Apply this rule if... field: you can select individual senders (The sender... > is this person) or groups (The sender... > is a member of this group) from the menu. An example of changing the scope of senders to a distribution group (Engineering) is shown in Fig. 22.

Fig. 22. Limiting the scope of senders.

The transport rule will be applied to both outgoing and internal messages sent by the users and/or members of the group(s) you specified. Note that if the group you selected has other groups nested inside, emails sent by members of the nested groups will also travel through the CodeTwo service.

If you do not want to add signatures to emails sent between the users inside your tenant, you need to add and configure another condition, as described in the next section.

Configuration of the transport rule to exclude internal emails

If you would like to stop adding signatures to your internal correspondence, you need to modify your transport rule by adding an extra condition in the Apply this rule if... field. Click add condition, select The recipient... is external/internal and choose Outside the organization. The condition should appear as shown in Fig. 23.

Fig. 23. Additional condition to exclude internal correspondence.

See next

Installing and launching the signature management application