How to add an Exchange Online User Mailbox (Office 365)
Overview
Follow these instructions to add your Exchange Online User Mailbox (ex. andersen@acme.com) to an individual inbox in Front. A user mailbox is a mailbox that you log into using a username and password.
Helpful information before you get started
- Front will automatically import 50k of your most recent email messages. More on the import behavior here.
- Front has 2-way sync with user mailboxes on Office 365. More on sync behavior here and exceptions here.
- All Outlook folders will be converted into tags and applied to the conversation. The tags will be made private or public depending on whether the channel is added to an individual or shared inbox.
- By default, any Office 365 user mailboxes will have their threading mode set to Office 365. This will allow for full two-way sync for all inbound and outbound email, open/archived status, and tagging. If you change the threading mode to any other option, the status of messages and tags will not be synced.
- If you already have an SMTP setup for your Office 365 account, see this article on how to transition.
How to prepare your inbox before adding it to Front
To ensure your transition to Front goes smoothly, prepare your inbox using the following best practices before adding your Office 365 user mailbox to Front.
- For emails that still need to be worked on - create a unique Office 365 folder and move all the emails you want to keep track of into that folder.
- We assume user mailboxes will be added to individual inboxes. Follow these instructions after you've gone through the configuration steps in the next section:
- Mass archive your conversations up to the current date if you see any are open in your new Front inbox.
- Once you’ve archived your entire inbox, simply navigate back to your Inbox and click into the search bar and use the tag modifier tag: to search for all email conversations that have your unique Office 365 label on it.
- Select all and unarchive those conversations.
Instructions
Step 1
Click the gear icon on the top right of Front and into the Personal settings tab. Admins can also access user settings by following these steps.
Step 2
Click on Inboxes on the left menu and Add an individual inbox.
Step 3
Fill out the name and description of your inbox. Click Create.
Step 4
Choose Microsoft from the channel menu, then Office 365 (Exchange Online), and click the User mailbox option.
Step 5
Click the Sign in with Microsoft button to log in with your credentials.
Step 6
Your channel will be added and your history will be imported into the Archived tab of your inbox.
Permissions
When connecting an Office 365 account, you are agreeing to give Front the following permissions:
FAQ
How will Front sync with Office 365?
Check out the full breakdown here.
Folder setup
The default folders that need to exist in your Office 365 account, in order to successfully complete your sync, are: Inbox, Drafts, Sent Items, Deleted Items, Junk Email, and Archive. If you rename one of these folders or if a message is in a customized folder or part of a shared mailbox, Front will tag the conversation with the name of the folder when it syncs over. If you experience an error referencing missing required folders, please contact us.
What happens to my shared and private folders from Office 365?
Front has one-way sync for user-created Office 365 private folders, which sync to Front as private tags (including nesting) within an inbox.
Outgoing display name
Office 365 does not support setting a different display name for the From address when sending an email. It uses the name set on your Office 365 account.
Authentication
The person who signs in and authenticates the inbox will have their account tied to this channel. If they change their password or their user account is deleted in Office 365, the channel will stop syncing. If that happens, an admin will need to go into the channel settings to re-authenticate the channel to bring it back online.
Automatic history import
When you connect an Office 365 email account to Front, we will automatically import your most recent 50K messages.
Troubleshooting
See here for common troubleshooting questions for Office 365 channels.
Pricing
This feature is available on all plans.
Related Exchange Articles
9 replies
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After connecting to the "office365 account" does it take a while before it starts the syncing process? How long does it take?
I see only new emails coming in directly, but it doesn't show me any email which came into the office365 account from before I connected it to Front. -
Joep Mutsaerts Hey! Your email history doesn't sync automatically, but we can run the import for you manually. Please send an email to team@frontapp.com and let us know what inbox you'd like to import from.
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OK, thank you. I did that and it is working like a charm. Cheers
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Hello,
I have synced my 365 mailbox with front. When I archive an email in front it disappears from my mailbox. Where does it go?
Also I would love to be able to see and manipulate my inbox subfolders from front as well.
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Aaron Miller Hi Aaron, so sorry that we missed this comment when you first posted it. Feel free to email us at support@frontapp.com in the future if you have specific questions about your account. To answer your question, archived messages go in the "All" section of your inbox list. Currently you aren't able to edit your O365 folders from Front, as O365 is the "owner" of these folders so you have to make edits there.
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Hi, I am trying to set up Front synced with Office 365 and I do not like the fact that it syncs with the archive folders without allowing me to see that archive folder structure within Front. I have many rules that automatically allocate inbound emails to archive folders and because Front presents emails even after being archived, I have to deal with them again in Front. Is there a plan to either add archive folders to Front along with the ability to move emails to an archive folder (the most ideal answer) or to exclude Archive so I don't have to deal with email in Front even if they've already been moved in Outlook?
I love what Front is able to do for my employees that must work a shared inbox as part of their regular duties, but for those that infrequently will check Front, the best way to get them to do that is to move them from Outlook to Front but with the way emails in the Archive folder are handled, I am not going to get buy-in from my users.
Thanks,
Greg Lewis
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I need someone from Front technical development to contact me ASAP. Front treated EVERY item in my Office 365 mailbox as one bucket and when I said I wanted to Archive everything older than today it is now taking EVERY item that I put into my folder structure and moving it into Office 365's default Archive folder. This is insane!
I deleted the Front integration for now to hopefully stop it from completely ruining all of the sorting I've done over the years (it still hasn't stopped) but I need a much better understanding of what's going on before I can consider Front as an acceptable email client for Office 365.
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As a followup, I am going to try moving all of my archived folders to Office 365's Archive instead of my older custom folder. I'll report what effect this has, it might be what's needed for Front to not require me to touch emails that have already been moved (now to the Archive folder). Thanks.
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After moving all of my archived folders to the Archive folder, I re-added my Office 365 account to Front and new content being put into the Archive sub-folders is still seen in my Front Inbox for my Office 365 account as open items.
The inability of Front to let me organize how I archive things or even honor the Archiving of items into sub-folders make Front a pretty limited email client that I doubt I can use. I'd like to discuss the possibility of a feature enhancement to make it work for people that need to sort archived information within their Mailbox.
Thanks,
Greg