When configuring email channels, for all the outgoing emails from HappyFox, you can either choose to use HappyFox email server or you can configure Microsoft Office365 email server using SMTP. Setting up SMTP for a channel ensures that the email transactions happen in the configured email server.

 

Steps to configure Microsoft Office 365 SMTP in HappyFox using OAuth

1. Login to Agent portal as an Admin

2. Navigate to HappyFox Main Menu > Channels > Email

3. Click on three dot icon next to the email channel you have already created

4. Choose Configure SMTP. 

5. Click on the Microsoft logo to sign in and authenticate your Microsoft account thereby automatically configuring the required SMTP settings for Microsoft Office 365. If you have already configured SMTP for this channel, please click on Remove SMTP to delete the existing details and then re-configure.

 

 

6. Provide your Microsoft Username and Password and click on Submit. The username should be the same as the email channel.

 

 

 

7. Now you will see the list of permissions that will be provided as part of this authentication. Click on Yes to accept.

 

 

Notes:
1) Ensure the email address has the required SMTP permissions enabled as per the requirement specified by Microsoft in this article

2) Please ensure the email channel/username has only Global Admin selected. We've noticed intermittent outgoing email issues with accounts having more than one role. There is a bug at Microsoft's end which means that if a certain combination of roles are selected for a username, OAUTH2 will fail for SMTP, even though it works fine for IMAP
 

 

8. On successful authentication you will be redirected back to SMTP configuration page. 

 

9. The SMTP settings for Microsoft Office 365 mail server will be updated automatically based on the authentication (refer screenshot below)

 

 

 

 

Note for existing customers using MS Office 365 SMTP setup for outgoing emails using basic authentication:

Starting from Oct 1, 2022, Microsoft will start disabling basic authentication (that is use of app username and passwords) for several protocols in Exchange Online. Though SMTP Auth can still be used, for security reasons, it is recommended to use OAuth 2.0 token-based authorization even for SMTP account setups. Please refer to this article Deprecation of basic authentication by Microsoft services  for more details.

 

Note: Only Global Administrators or Privileged Role Administrators with access to consent to 3rd party applications can authorize SMTP OAuth integration with HappyFox. We do not currently support user authorization flows that require an admin approval to grant admin consent for the third party app from Microsoft Azure portal.

 

How to move from basic authentication to OAuth for existing Microsoft Office 365 SMTP setups?

Customers who have already configured their email channels with Microsoft office 365 SMTP setup using basic authentication (username and password) can move to OAuth easily by following the steps below.

 

1. Navigate to HappyFox Main Menu > Channels > Email and open the SMTP configurations page of the email channel that is already configured with SMTP.  

2. Click on the Microsoft logo and follow the steps explained above to authenticate using OAuth.

3. Once completed, your Microsoft Office 365 Email server - SMTP setup will now be based on OAuth authorization. 

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions

What is OAuth?

OAuth is an open authorization protocol which gives users the ability to share or grant limited access to user resources between different applications without providing user names and passwords. Resources can be anything like emails, documents, user information, photos, videos, etc. 

 

Our email address are configured with 2FA. Will OAuth still work with this?

If your looking to configure SMTP for an email address that has 2FA enabled, we recommend not using OAuth. Instead create an app-password in Microsoft settings and use it the following options to setup SMTP.  Username would be the email address that is used as an email channel, password should be the newly created app-password and other details as per Microsoft's requirement

 

 

How to fix authentication failures in SMTP accounts?

Sometimes, when the authorization tokens fail to refresh in the system (due to password change or when the connection is broken) the SMTP authentication may fail. The outgoing emails from HappyFox to the SMTP email server will not be delivered and the connection will be in Inactive state. In such cases we send out an email to the email channel admins to re-authenticate the SMTP account(s) using OAuth. Once the re-authentication is successful the connection will be active and emails will be delivered.

 

What type of email address can be used for SMTP OAuth connections?

Microsoft supports only Global Administrators or Privileged Role Administrators with access to consent to 3rd party applications to authorize SMTP OAuth integration with HappyFox. We do not currently support user authorization flows that require an admin approval to grant admin consent for the third party app from Microsoft Azure portal