How to add an Exchange distribution list/group

Follow these instructions to add your Exchange Server or Online Distribution Group for your team in Front. A distribution list is a free mail option that Microsoft provides to companies who want to easily distribute mail sent to a single address to a group or team of people.

If you are adding a Microsoft 365 Groups email to Front, please follow the steps in this article, as they differ from the steps to add a distribution group.

• The person who adds the distribution group needs to be a Front admin

• You must have Microsoft Exchange administrator access to complete the setup

• With email forwarding, there is no email history to import since a distribution group does not have an associated mailbox. 

• If you have an Office 365 subscription, the email history of that distribution group will be within each teammate's user mailbox. Consider having all teammates connect their user mailboxes to Front, which will allow Front to import that history.

• Front cannot import email history for user inboxes on Exchange Server.

If you have an Office 365 subscription, consider transitioning the distribution group to a Shared Mailbox to take advantage of Front’s API sync capabilities. More information on how Front works with Shared Mailboxes can be found here.

Step 1

In your Exchange admin center, navigate to the distribution group you’d like to add to Front.

Step 2

Navigate to the Members tab, then select View all and manage owners.

Step 3

Check to ensure the admin adding the distribution group to Front is listed as an owner. If not, use Add owners to add them.

Step 4

Navigate to the Settings tab for the distribution group, then select Edit manage delegates.

Step 5

Add the admin as a delegate with Send as or Send on behalf permissions, then click Save changes. You can configure Send as or Send on behalf for a given user, but not both. If you configure both, it will default to Send as.

Step 1

In Front, click the gear icon on the top right and into the Company settings tab.

Step 2

Click Inboxes in the left menu and create a new shared inbox.

Step 3

Click Channels in the left menu, then click the Connect a channel button.

Step 4

Select Microsoft from the list, choose whether you are using Office 365 or On-premise Exchange server, and select Distribution Group or Microsoft 365 Group. Click Continue.

Step 5

Enter the email address you want to connect as a channel (e.g. support@acme.com), then click Continue. 

In your Exchange admin center, this is the Primary email address for the distribution group.

Step 6

Click the Sign in to Microsoft button, then log in to Microsoft using your admin login credentials (you must have Microsoft Exchange administrator access).

You’ll see an Authenticated successfully message and the Sign in to Microsoft button will be greyed out. Click Continue.

Step 7

Select the inbox to connect to your channel, then click Continue. All messages from your channel will route to this inbox by default.

Step 8

Copy the Front forwarding address.

Step 9

In your Exchange admin center, create a contact with the forwarding address from Front.

Step 10

Navigate to your distribution group, then add the contact as a member. You can find more information about how to manage distribution groups here.

Step 1

Now that emails can flow into Front, you can set up an outbound mail server via OAuth to ensure emails are delivered through your Exchange servers. 

Step 2

In Front, navigate the distribution group channel you just created.

Step 3

Navigate to the Settings tab, then click Modify next to Send Outbound Messages.

Step 4

Under the Office 365 OAuth2 option, click the Sign in to Microsoft button, then log in to Microsoft using your admin login credentials (you must have Microsoft Exchange administrator access).

Step 5

Click Save when finished.

Alternate option: Send emails with SendGrid

As an alternative to the OAuth steps in Part 3, you can always send email through Front's third party mail server, SendGrid, and you will not retain a record of your outbound emails on your own server. You will need to:

• Select Front Default instead of Office 365 OAuth2 in your Send Outbound Messages setting.

• Set up SPF/DKIM records. See this article to learn more.

Once all users from the distribution groups are in Front, remove those users from the distribution group in your Exchange settings. This will ensure emails sent to the distribution group no longer go to each user's individual inbox, instead will be routed into a single shared inbox in Front.

You may see better inbox deliverability rates if you send email with the servers you already use, so custom SMTP is generally preferred. Outbound messages will be saved in the mailbox of the Exchange user account used for credentials. Recipients will see emails' sender info populated from the Front teammate's signature as explained here.

For Exchange distribution lists, custom SMTP connections are typically configured using a user's credential. Once configured successfully, emails that are sent using that distribution list address will be delivered and stored in that user's Sent box. On the recipient's side, emails will appear as expected - sent from the distribution list address.

For example, let's say you have a distribution list (distro@acme.com) and a user credential (sophia@acme.com). With Front, you will configure a custom SMTP for distro@ using Sophia's credential. Emails sent from distro@ will appear in Sophia's sent folder in Outlook. When a recipient receives the email from distro@, despite the custom SMTP being configured with Sophia's credential, will show from: distro@amce.com.

This feature is available on all plans.

• How to add an Exchange Online User Mailbox

• How to add an Exchange Online Shared Mailbox