Sharepoint 2010 Inbound and Outbound Email Configuration (AD Integrated) without Exchange

Exchange deployment is not necessary to take profit of Sharepoint email capabilities. Transform a email to a given address into an item on a list is a powerful feature to empower your Information worker collaboration capabilities.

Incoming and outcoming email configuration It is finally working on my Sharepoint Server. Now you can configure your Email enabled list going to the “List Settings” configuration > Communications tab. You will be able to map any mail following the pattern mylist@mydomain.com to your Sharepoint list.

Configuration Steps

1. Configure an IIS SMTP Server on the Sharepoint Server as an open relay server.
   
   1. For Windows Server 2008 R2, add the SMTP feature,
      
      
   2. Open your IIS 6.0 manager (make sure you installed the service as part of the Web Server Role).
      
   3. Configure the default SMTP Virtual Server #1 as desired, nothing special here.
      
   4. Add your domain as an alias domain and this is it.
      
2. Point MX records for the zone mydomain.com to the SMTP server.
   
3. Create an OU on AD dedicated to Sharepoint contacts and delegate permissions to the Sharepoint computer account on the OU. We used the NETWORK_SERVICE account because the Central Admin Website is running under the Network Service account.
   
   1. Read the sections “To delegate Create all Child Objects and Delete all Child Objects control of the OU to the application pool identity account for Central Administration” and “To add Delete Subtree permissions for the application pool identity account for Central Administration” on http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc287879(office.14).aspx
      
      
4. (Weird :S) Extend the AD schema with Exchange 2003 forestprep. Sharepoint is able to work without exchange, however for AD integration the schema has to be prepared.
   
5. Configure the Inbound and Outbound Email settings on the “System Settings” section of the Sharepoint Central Admin.
   
6. Create a discussion list, then configure settings for this discussion list.
   
7. Sent email to test@mydomain.com and watch how the item is created.

Resources

- MX Test: http://www.mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=mx:swfwd.com
- Sharepoint 2010 : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc287879(office.14).aspx