Connecting a mailbox

What your provider needs to support

Find your provider below. Two out of three cases need no extra work at all.

Why Microsoft 365 does not connect directly

Microsoft has switched off “basic authentication” for IMAP in Exchange Online. This affects every program that reads a Microsoft 365 mailbox directly, not just ours. Its successor is OAuth2, which requires you to register your own application in your Azure directory and grant it access. We do not support OAuth2 yet – it is planned, but we deliberately name no date. For many customers the route below is the better one anyway: it needs no directory administrator and no access grants that expire.

Signing in is not affected: Microsoft Entra ID can be connected as an SSO provider – like any other provider that speaks OIDC or SAML 2.0. Only reading mail over IMAP requires OAuth2 at Microsoft, and that is what we do not offer yet.

The solution: a dedicated helpdesk mailbox with forwarding

You create a separate mailbox with a provider that accepts a user name and password – your web hosting package usually includes one. The address your customers know is forwarded to it. The ticket system reads only that one mailbox.

What this gives you

• The ticket system never gets access to your company mailbox, only to the messages that were forwarded to it.
• No app registration, no directory administrator consent, no access grants that expire after 90 days.
• Works the same way with every provider – including after you switch mail providers.
• Hosted helpdesks work exactly like this by default. The difference: here the mailbox is yours, and the data stays on your server.

Step by step

1. 1

   Create the helpdesk mailbox

   With your web host or any provider that allows IMAP with a user name and password. ⚠️ The address cannot sit on your main domain if that domain’s mail is already handled by Microsoft 365 – use a subdomain or your host’s domain. Note down the IMAP server and port (usually 993 with SSL) and the SMTP server and port (usually 465 with SSL or 587 with STARTTLS).

2. 2

   Set up forwarding in Microsoft 365

   In the Microsoft 365 admin center, forward the address your customers write to on to the new mailbox. ⚠️ Microsoft blocks automatic forwarding to external addresses by default – your administrator has to allow it explicitly in the outbound spam filter policy. Otherwise nothing arrives, and the mailbox shows no error either.

3. 3

   Enter it in the ticket system

   Settings → E-mail: enter the IMAP server, port and SSL, then the mailbox with its user name and password for each team. You do not have to type the target folder for processed mail – “Read from server” fetches the real folder list, because folder names look different with every provider.

4. 4

   Set the sender address

   Under SMTP you decide which address your customers see as the sender of your replies. The address they already know is usually the right one. Sending has to go through a server that permits that sender address – normally the same provider as the helpdesk mailbox.

5. 5

   Test it

   Send a mail to your customer-facing address. Within a minute the ticket is in the system and the confirmation has reached the sender. If nothing arrives, check the helpdesk mailbox’s spam folder first.

Things to watch out for

Quick guide for Google Workspace and Gmail

No forwarding needed here. The mailbox connects directly once you have an app password.

1. 1.Switch on two-factor sign-in for the Google account. Without it Google does not offer app passwords.
2. 2.Create an app password in the account’s security settings and write it down – it is shown only once.
3. 3.Enter it in the ticket system: IMAP imap.gmail.com, port 993 with SSL; SMTP smtp.gmail.com, port 465 with SSL. Use the app password, not the account password.
4. 4.Do not type folder names: Gmail keeps its system folders under names like “[Gmail]/…”. Use “Read from server” in the ticket system and pick the folder from the list.