Set Up Email

People in businesses send information and documents, such as sales and purchase orders and invoices, by email every day. Administrators can make that easier to do by connecting one or more email accounts to Business Central, so you can send documents without having to open an email app. You can compose each message individually with basic formatting tools, such as fonts, styles, colors, and so on, and add attachments of up to 100MB. Administrators can also set up report layouts that include only the key information from documents. For more information, see Send Documents by Email.

The email capabilities in Business Central are for outbound messages only. You cannot receive replies, that is, there is no inbox page in Business Central.

Note

If you are using Business Central on-premises, before you can set up email you must create an app registration for Business Central in Azure portal. The app registration will enable Business Central to authorize and authenticate with your email provider. For more information, see Setting Up Email for Business Central On-Premises. In Business Central online, we handle this for you.

Required Permissions

To set up email, you must have the EMAIL SETUP permission set. For more information, see Assign Permissions to Users and Groups.

Adding Email Accounts

You add email accounts through extensions that enable accounts from different providers to connect to Business Central. The standard extensions let you use accounts from Microsoft Exchange Online, but other extensions may be available that let you connect accounts from other providers, such as Gmail.

After you add an email account, you can specify predefined business scenarios in which to use the account to send emails. For example, you can specify that all users send sales documents from one account, and purchase documents from another. For more information, see Assign Email Scenarios to Email Accounts.

The following table describes the email extensions that are available by default.

Extension	Description	Examples of when to use
Microsoft 365	Everyone sends email from a shared mailbox in Exchange Online.	When all messages come from the same department, for example, your sales organization sends messages from a sales@cronus.com account. This requires that you set up a shared mailbox in the Microsoft 365 admin center. For more information, see Shared mailboxes.
Current User	Everyone sends email from the account they used to sign in to Business Central.	Allow communications from individual accounts.
Other (SMTP)	Use SMTP protocol to send emails.	Allow communications through your SMTP mail server.

Note

The Microsoft 365 and Current User extensions use the accounts you set up for users in the Microsoft 365 admin center for your Microsoft 365 subscription. To send email using the extensions, users must have a valid license for Exchange Online.

Legacy SMTP Settings and the Email - SMTP Connector Extension

If you're already using Business Central and have configured email through the legacy SMTP setup, you can continue using your setup in parallel with the Email - SMTP Connector extension. When we update your Business Central to the next release version, we will copy your legacy SMTP settings to the Email - SMTP Connector extension. When ready, your administrator can turn on the enhanced email capabilities and you will start using the Email - SMTP Connector extension. For more information, see About Feature Management. However, there is no synchronization between the SMTP Connector extension and the legacy settings. If you change the SMTP settings in the extension, you should make the same changes in the legacy SMTP setup, or vice versa.

Note

If you have customizations that rely on the legacy SMTP email setup, there is a chance that something will go wrong with your customizations if you start using email extensions. We recommend that you set up and test the extensions before you turn on the feature switch for enhanced email capabilities.

Important

If you are using Business Central online, you cannot use the OAuth 2.0 authentication method.
If you are using Business Central on-premises, you can use the OAuth 2.0 for authentication but you must create an application registration in the Azure portal, and then run the Set up Azure Active Directory assisted setup guide in Business Central to connect to Azure AD. For more information, see Create an App Registration for Business Central in Azure Portal.

Add Email Accounts

The Set Up Email assisted setup guide can help you get started quickly with emails.

Note

You must have a default email account, even if you add only one account. The default account will be used for all email scenarios that are not assigned to an account. For more information, see Assign Email Scenarios to Email Accounts.

1. Choose the icon, enter Set Up Email Accounts, and then choose the related link.
2. Fill in the fields as necessary. Hover over a field to read a short description.

Assign Email Scenarios to Email Accounts

Email scenarios are processes that involve sending a document, such as a sales or purchase order, or a notification, such as an invitation to an external accountant. You can use specific email accounts for specific scenarios. For example, you can specify that all users always send sales documents from one account, purchase documents from another, and warehouse or production documents from a third account. You can assign, reassign, and remove scenarios whenever you want, but you can only assign a scenario to one email account at a time. The default email account will be used for all scenarios that are not assigned to an account.

Set Up Reusable Email Texts and Layouts for Sales and Purchase Documents

You can use reports to include key information from sales and purchase documents in texts for emails. This procedure describes how to set up the Sales - Invoice report for posted sales invoices, but the process is similar for other reports.

1. Choose the icon, enter Report Selections Sales, and then choose the related link.

2. On the Report Selection - Sales page, in the Usage field, select Invoice.

3. On a new line, in the Report ID field, select, for example, standard report 1306.

4. Select the Use for Email Body check box.

5. Choose the Email Body Layout Code field, and then select a layout from the drop-down list.

   Report layouts define both the style and the content of the text in the email, including texts such as a greeting or instructions that precede the document information. You can see all available report layouts if you choose the Select from full list.

6. To view or edit the layout that the email text is based on, select the layout on the Custom Report Layouts page, and then choose the Edit Layout action.

7. If you want to offer customers to pay for sales electronically, you can set up the related payment service, such as PayPal, and then have the PayPal information and link inserted in the email text. For more information, see Enable Customer Payments Through PayPal.

8. Choose the OK button.

Now, when you choose, for example, the Send action on the Posted Sales Invoice page, the email body will contain the document information of report 1306 preceded by styled standard text according to the report layout that you selected in step 5.

Using a Substitute Sender Address on Outbound Email Messages

If you are using the legacy SMTP settings, you can use the Send As or Send on Behalf capabilities from Microsoft Exchange to change the sender address on outbound messages. Business Central will use the SMTP account to authenticate to Exchange, but will either substitute the sender address with the one you specify, or amend it with "on behalf of."

The following are examples of how Send As and Send on Behalf are used in Business Central:

• When you send documents such as purchase or sales orders to vendors and customers, you might want them to appear to come from a _noreply@yourcompanyname.com_ address.
• When your workflow sends an approval request by email using the email address of the requestor.

Note

You can only use one account to substitute sender addresses. That is, you cannot have one substitute address for purchasing processes, and another for sales processes.

To set up the substitute sender address for all outbound email messages

1. In the Exchange admin center for your Microsoft 365 account, find the mailbox to use as the substitute address, and then copy or make a note of the address. If you need a new address, go to your Microsoft 365 admin center to create a new user and set up their mailbox.
2. In Business Central choose the icon, enter SMTP Email Setup, and then choose the related link.
3. In the Send As field, enter the substitute address.
4. Copy or make a note of the address in the User ID field.
5. In the Exchange admin center, find the mailbox to use as the substitute address, and then enter the address from the User ID field in the Send As field. For more information, see Use the EAC to assign permissions to individual mailboxes.

To use the substitute address in approval workflows

1. In Business Central choose the icon, enter SMTP Email Setup, and then choose the related link.
2. Copy or make a note of the address in the User ID field.
3. Choose the icon, enter Approval User Setup, and then choose the related link.
4. In the Exchange admin center, find the mailboxes for each user listed in the Approval User Setup page, and in the Send As field enter the address from the User ID field of the SMTP Email Setup page in Business Central. For more information, see Manage permissions for recipients.
5. In Business Central choose the icon, enter SMTP Email Setup, and then choose the related link.
6. To enable substitution, turn on the Allow Sender Substitution toggle.

Note

Business Central will determine which address to display in the following order:

1. The address specified in the E-Mail field on the Approval User Setup page for messages in a workflow.
2. The address specified in the Send As field in the SMTP Email Setup page.
3. The address specified in the User ID field in the SMTP Email Setup page.

Set Up Document Sending Profiles

You can set up a preferred method of sending sales documents for each of your customers so that you do not have to select a sending option, such as whether to send the document by email or as an electronic document, every time you send a document. For more information, see Set Up Document Sending Profiles.

Set Up Public Folders and Rules for Email Logging in Exchange Online

Get more out of the communications between salespeople and your existing or potential customers by tracking email exchanges, and then turning them into actionable opportunities. For more information, see Track Email Message Exchanges Between Salespeople and Contacts.

Before you can set up email logging, you must prepare your Exchange Online with public folders. You can do this in the Exchange admin center, or you can use the Exchange Management Shell.

Tip

If you want to use the Exchange Management Shell, you can find inspiration for how to set up your script in a sample script that we published to the BCTech repo.

The following list describes the main steps with links to learn more.

• Create an admin role for public folders based on the information in the following table:

  Property	Value
  Name	Public Folders Management
  Selected roles	Public Folders
  Selected members	The email of the user account that Business Central will use to run the email logging job

  For more information, see Manage role groups.

• Create a new public folder mailbox based on the information in the following table:

  Property	Value
  Name	Public MailBox

  For more information, see Create a public folder mailbox in Exchange Server.

• Create new public folders

  • Create a new public folder with the name Email Logging in the root so that the full path to the folder becomes \Email Logging\
  • Create two subfolders so that the the result is the following full paths to the folders:
    • \Email Logging\Queue\
    • \Email Logging\Storage\

  For more information, see Create a public folder.

• Mail-enable the Queue public folder

  For more information, see Mail-enable or mail-disable a public folder

• Mail-enable sending emails to the Queue public folder using Outlook or the Exchange Management Shell

  For more information, see Allow anonymous users to send email to a mail-enabled public folder

• Set the email logging user as an owner of both public folders, Queue and Storage public folders using Outlook or the Exchange Management Shell based on the information in the following table:

  Property	Value
  User	The email of the user account that Business Central will use to run the email logging job
  Permission level	Owner

  For more information, see Assign permissions to the public folder.

• Create two mail flow rules based on the information in the following table

  Purpose	Name	Conditions	Action
  A rule for incoming email	Log Email Sent to This Organization	The sender is located Outside the organization, and the recipient is located Inside the organization	BCC the email account that is specified for the Queue public folder
  A rule for outgoing email	Log Email Sent from This Organization	The sender is located Inside the organization, and the recipient is located Outside the organization	BCC the email account that is specified for the Queue public folder

  For more information, see Manage mail flow rules in Exchange Online and Mail flow rule actions in Exchange Online.

Note

If you make changes in the Exchange Management Shell, the changes become visible in the Exchange admin center after a delay. Also, the changes made in Exchange will be available in Business Central after a delay. The delay might be several hours.

Next, you connect Business Central with Exchange Online. For more information, see Track Email Message Exchanges Between Salespeople and Contacts.

Setting Up Email for Business Central On-Premises

Business Central on-premises can integrate with services that are based on Microsoft Azure. For example, you can use Cortana Intelligence for smarter cash flow forecasts, Power BI to visualize your business, and Exchange Online for sending email. Integration with these services is based on an app registration in Azure Active Directory. The app registration provides authentication and authorization services for communications. To use the email capabilities in Business Central on-premises, you must register Business Central as an app in the Azure portal, and then connect Business Central to the app registration. The following sections describe how.

Create an App Registration for Business Central in Azure Portal

The steps to register Business Central in Azure portal are described in Register an application in Azure Active Directory. The settings that are specific to the email capabilities are the delegated permissions that you grant to your app registration. The following table lists the minimum permissions.

API / Permission Name	Type	Description
Microsoft Graph / User.Read	Delegated	Sign in and read user profile.
Microsoft Graph / Mail.ReadWrite	Delegated	Compose email messages.
Microsoft Graph / Mail.Send	Delegated	Send email messages.
Microsoft Graph / offline_access	Delegated	Maintain data access consent.

If you are using a legacy SMTP setup or the SMTP connector and want to use OAuth for authentication, the permissions are slightly different. The following table lists the permissions.

API / Permission Name	Type	Description
Microsoft Graph / offline_access	Delegated	Maintain data access consent.
Microsoft Graph / openid	Delegated	Sign users in.
Microsoft Graph / User.Read	Delegated	Sign in and read user profile.
Microsoft Graph / SMTP.Send	Delegated	Send emails from mailboxes using SMTP AUTH.
Office 365 Exchange Online / User.Read	Delegated	Sign in and read user profile.

When you create your app registration, note the following information. You will need it to connect Business Central to your app registration.

• Application (client) ID
• Redirect URI (optional)
• Client secret

For general guidelines for registering an app, see Quickstart: Register an application with the Microsoft identity platform.

Note

If you have trouble using the legacy SMTP setup to send email after you connect Business Central to your app registration, it might be because SMTP AUTH is not enabled for your tenant. We recommend that you use the Microsoft 365 and Current User email connectors instead, because they use Microsoft Graph Mail APIs. However, if you must use the SMTP setup you can enable SMTP AUTH. For more information, see Enable or disable authenticated client SMTP submission (SMTP AUTH) in Exchange Online.

Connect Business Central to Your App Registration

After you register your application in Azure portal, in Business Central, use the Email Application AAD Registration assisted setup guide to connect Business Central to it.

1. In Business Central, choose the icon, enter Email Application AAD Registration, and then choose the related link.
2. Fill in the fields as necessary. Hover over a field to read a short description.

Tip

Alternatively, if you are connecting for the first time, you can run the Set up email assisted setup guide. The guide will require the information for connecting to your app registration.

See Also

Shared mailboxes in Exchange Online
Working with Business Central
Setting Up Business Central
Send Documents by Email
Customizing Business Central Using Extensions
Using Business Central as Your Business Inbox in Outlook
Getting Business Central on My Mobile Device Getting Business Central on My Mobile Device Analyzing Email Telemetry (administration content)

Note

Can you tell us about your documentation language preferences? Take a short survey.

The survey will take about seven minutes. No personal data is collected (privacy statement).