Configuring Incoming Email for a basic scenario on a SharePoint 2013 Document Library

This post walks through the process of enabling a document library to receive incoming email configuring all necessaries features. For the basic scenario described on this post, each SharePoint front-end web server must be running the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) service and the SharePoint Foundation Web Application service.

To Enable a SharePoint 2013 document library to receive emails, follow the following steps:

1. Ensure the SMTP feature is activated on the SharePoint Server.
2. Configure Incoming email settings.
3. Configure a SharePoint Document Library for incoming email.
4. Configure a connector on the Exchange Server 2010.
5. Create a new contact account to each document/list.
6. Test your environment.

1) Activate the SMTP Feature in Windows Server that is your WFE in the Farm:

• Make sure you are logged on as a local server administrator and open the Server Manager;
• Click on Features, Add Features:
• 
• Browse and select the SMTP Server option. The “Add Feautures Wizard message appears, click “Add Required Role Services”, and then click Next three times.
• On the Confirm Installation Selections form, verify that it lists SMPT server, and click Install
• 
• Make sure your Installation Results page appears with a successful message:
• 
• Change the Startup Type from “Manual” to “Automatic” for the “Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)” service on “Server Manager”, Configuration, Services section:
• 
• 
• If you go to Properties on the domain, you can configure the Drop folder here if the default of C:\inetpub\mailroot\drop isn’t a desirable location.  However, this Drop folder must be consistent on all SharePoint Servers.
• 
• Go to Properties on the SMTP Virtual Server #1. 
• Under General –> Enable Logging.
• 
• Under Access -> Authentication, validate that Anonymous is checked (note that SharePoint handles authorization for incoming email, so Anonymous, for most installations, should be okay).
• 
• Under Access -> Relay, set following this screenshot:
• 
• Other settings you may want to consider are under the Messages tab.  While SharePoint will enforce the Web Application’s maximum file size which has a default of 50MB, SMTP server’s default mail size is significantly smaller at 2MB.  Consider changing the “Limit message size” and “Limit session size” values, or removing the restriction entirely.  The session size will be slightly larger than all messages in the session.
• 
• The next step is to configure the Drop folder security.  Again, by default, this folder is located at D:\inetpub\mailroot\drop.  On the drop folder, give WSS_WPG NTFS Read & Execute rights.  Give WSS_ADMIN_WPG NTFS Full Control rights.  Do this for each SharePoint Server handling Incoming Email

2) Configure Incoming email settings:

• Launch SharePoint Central Administration, select System Settings:
• 
• Click Configure Incoming E-mail:
• 
• Note: If you get a message that the SMTP service is not started, follow the instructions in step 1 above on Activate SMTP Feature on SharePoint Server.
• Next to “Enable Sites on this server to receive e-mails?”, select Yes.
• Next to “Settings Mode” choose “Automatic” if you want to use Windows Server’s SMTP feature. if you want to use another email application on this server, then select Advanced and define the email drop folder where SharePoint will look for incoming email. On this post we will choose “Automatic”:
• Next to use the “SharePoint Directory Management Service” to Create Distribution Groups and Contacts, if you choose No: Mail-enabled lists will not be listed in Active Directory as mail-enabled contacts. You can still send email to that list if you know its mail address. if you choose Yes, a corresponding mail-enabled contact in Active Directory will be created. If you choose Use Remote, this means that you have configured a remote SharePoint Directory Management Web Service and you would need to enter its URL. On this post we will choose “No”: 
• Next to “Email Server Display Address”, either keep the default or enter the mail domain address for all of SharePoint’s mail-enabled lists. On this post we set the SERVER_NAME.FQDN of our WFE (sp2013wfe.mabotega.local):
• Click Ok to save your settings
• 
• 

3) Configure a Document Library for Incoming email:

• Switch to your document library’s settings. On this post we created a document library called “DocumentsIncoming”:
• 
• Click “Incoming email settings” on Communications section:
• 
• Set the option “Allow This Document Library to Receive Email?” to Yes:
• Set the email address (Example: mailsharepoint) to complete the email address:
• Set the option “Save Original Email” to Yes. This will ensure that the mail message is stored in this library, but only the text body in the email.
• Accept remaining default settings and click OK:
•  
• 
• A second configuration is only to accept emails from users that have permissions on the libraries/lists. This config, needs that the user has “contributor” permission on the Library/list or site collection:
• 

4) Configure a connector on the Exchange Server 2010.

• Create a new send connector on your Exchange Server 2010:
• Named it, in my scenario, I called “SharePoint Incomings”:
• Select the “Internal” to the “Select the intended use for this Send connector”:
• 
• Add tour WFE server FQDN as an SMT address space:
• 
• Select the “None”:
• 
• Add the FQDN of your WFE server as a smart host:
• 
• Select all your Exchange Servers 2010 as the Hub transport:
• 
• Confirm and click on new:
• 

5) Create a new contact account to each document/list.

• Create a new contact in our AD following the sample below (this contact will be used on the document library email settings – see it above):
• 

6) Test your environment

• Start your local mail client and compose a new email to the document library email address (mailsharepoint@sp2013wfe.mabotega.local), you can include a subject, body, and attachments to see how they appear on the library.
• Note: the email may take a few seconds to load up on the document library.

References

• https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262947.aspx
• https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263260.aspx
• https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/153119
• https://mediatemple.net/community/products/dv/204404584/sending-or-viewing-emails-using-telnet