After done about 60+ Office 365 migrations, I’ve noticed that almost all customers have Applications, Multi function printers or other devices that send some kind of email to end-users or suppliers/Customers.
These devices normally use the SMTP-Protocol.

To make sure that the emails is sent secure, Microsoft recommend to Authenticate the Application or Device which is going to send email.

I always recommend the customers to create one or several specific Office 365 Accounts with a Exchange Online license.This way you can set password never expire and choose a complex password with 16 characters.

Configure the Application or Device with the following settings:
SMTP Server: smtp.office365.com
Encryption/TLS: YES
Port: 587
And of course, make sure to enter the specific account under username and password.

Can I test the SMTP connection?

Of course you can test the connection and the credentials before you deploy this solution.
I’ve created a simple Powershell script that can test this:

$smtpcred = Get-Credential
Send-MailMessage –From SMTP@thecloudgeek.net –To Administrator@thecloudgeek.net –Subject “Testing SMTP” –Body “This email is sent from Office365 SMTP server for test purpose” -SmtpServer smtp.office365.com -Credential $smtpcred -UseSsl -Port 587

This script can come in handy when some customer call you to report that the email from the Applications/Devices isn’t working correctly. You can test the connection and the credentials easily.
Make sure that you change the mail-addresses, the Subject and Body after your needs.

Remember
not all application and devices have support for TLS and or to use specific credentials when sending mail through smtp servers.
To solve this, you might need to install a SMTP relay server in your server-infrastructure.

For more informations about other solutions and limits, visit Technet

I have been using shared mailbox for the majority of customers running Office 365 for a long time.Its a great way to create a mail-structure for different type of groups in an organisation.

For exampel Order@thecloudgeek.net,Info@thecloudgeek.net,Billing@thecloudgeek.net so on and so forth.
This is completely free, but to access this “Shared mailbox” you need an Office 365 account with an valid license and a outlook 2010+ client installed.

However, i’ve seen a couple of issues with “Shared mailbox” as well.
Several customers have reported that they don’t get regular updates in the shared mailbox. In some case, the mailbox is not updated in several days for some users.

This is a known issue, its a bug in the “Automapping” function that make the shared mailbox automapp in the outlook client.

Here is one way to solve the issue:

Step 1:

Remove the users “Full permission” to the “shared mailbox” witch isn’t syncing.

Step 2:

Make sure the “Shared mailbox” disappears from the users outlook client.
(You might speed up the process by restarting outlook.)

Step 3:

Disable the automapping function and add FullAccess to the specific shared mailbox through powershell:

Add-MailboxPermission -Identity “shared mailbox name” -User ‘Users name’ -AccessRight FullAccess -InheritanceType All -Automapping $false

Step 4:

Add the shared mailbox manually through the following steps:

Right-click on your main account and select “Data file properties” -> “Advanced” -> “Advanced” -> Press “Add” and type the emailadress of the “shared mailbox”

The mailbox will now start to sync as it should.
Be aware of “Use cached exchange Mode” This might take up alot of disk space in the user profile disk or on C:\ depending on setup and environment.