outgoing smtp server: gmail v.s company own smtp server

16 August 2016

Email Integration

Hi,

I configured an Odoo 8 instance, using my company actual domain, and actual email user logins/passwords…

Config A…
1. Entered an enquiry@mycompanyname.com as company email via "Configure your company data" in General Settings.
2. Applied my company's actual domain name as the Alias Domain in General Settings.
3. Restarted the instance after the steps above.
4. Created an outgoing SMTP using smtp.gmail.com. Deleted the localhost entry. There was only one outgoing mail server entry
5. Created 2 users' incoming mail servers entries, using users' actual company email accounts that exist in company mail server.
6. Applied the actual users' email addresses as Messaging Alias in the respective User Preference.
7. I did not delete mail.catchall.alias entry in system parameters.

With this config, I was able to successfully
a. Send Reset Password Instruction to users' company email accounts
b. Send a new email to the the 3rd gmail account from a user within Odoo.
c. Receive emails from a 3rd gmail account, to the 2 users' message inboxes within Odoo
d. Reply the emails sent by 3rd gmail account from user's message inboxes.

However, whenever I made just this change…
Config B…
1. Replaced the out outgoing mail server from smtp.gmail.com to one of the users' valid company email accounts tested in Config A above, then
a. Failed: Send Reset Password Instruction to users' company email accounts
b. Failed: Send a new email to the the 3rd gmail account from a user within Odoo
c. Passed: Receive emails from a 3rd gmail account, to the 2 users' message inboxes within Odoo
d. Failed: the emails sent by 3rd gmail account from user's message inboxes failed.
2. The file attached is an error message when I attempted to Send Reset Password Instruction. All other action did not have any pop up messages. Only shown as a liner record showing Delivery Failed in General Settings->Email:Emails

When I reverted back to smtp.gmail.com, then everything worked again.

My desire is to have external party sees my company domain in messages sent out from Odoo messaging, instead of seeing the gmail.com account address. I was using company smtp server thinking that I could achieve this desire. May I know if there is anyone who could help, what can I do to achieve the stated desire.

Thank you in advance.

gc

1 Answer

Best Answer

Hi Gordon,

Firstly, I think you have SMTP problem with your company email account which caused the connection issue in your Config B.

Secondly, I found you could misunderstand the design of the Odoo's email integration. You should neither add incoming/out going email per user/employee nor add personal emails as incoming/outgoing email.

The right and simple way of email integration is as follows:

Set up a catch-all email at your email server, I assume it would be catchall@yourcompany.com. This catch all feature in the email server is a must-have requirement.
Go to General Settings to set yourcompany.com as the domain alias.
Configure the catchall@yourcompany.com as both incoming and outgoing email server within Odoo
For each user, Messaging Alias must be specified in the user form. For example, John Doe may have john.doe as his messaging alias and Jane Roe may have jane.roe as her messaging alias which will "create" their business email as john.doe@yourcompany.com and jane.roe@yourcompany.com corresponding.
Let your employees know that their working email are john.doe@yourcompany.com and jan.roe@yourcompany.com. If business cards are printed, the working email for them should be john.doe@yourcompany.com / jan.roe@yourcompany.com
Ensure that john.doe@yourcompany.com and jan.roe@yourcompany.com do NOT exist in your email server.
Each user document is linked/related to a partner document which should be declared with a real email address. You have to define the real email address for each user in his/her related partner profile. It is usually a personal email address (e.g. john.doe@gmail.com or john.doe@yahoo.com, etc)

How the above setting works and could help your company?

When people send a message to an email address that does not exist in your email server, the message will be forwarded to catchall@yourcompany.com thanks to catch-all feature of your email server
Every 5 minutes (or more/less which can be configured within Odoo fetchmail action), Odoo will login your incoming email server (i.e. catchall@yourcompany.com) to fetch all email messages there.
During the fetching process, Odoo check header of each email message which contains information about sender, recipient, message id, etc. If the Odoo found that the message is send to one of email alias (e.g. john.doe@yourcompany.com) it will deliever the message to the right people at the right place, e.g. deliver to inbox of John Doe, attach message to the related document (sale order, invoice, manufacturing order, etc)
The related people (including your employees and partners) will be notified about the new coming message with a copy sent to their personal mail box.

Hope the above could help and please revert if it works for you.