Best practices for server-side synchronization

Consider the best practices outlined in this topic when you plan and deploy server-side synchronization.

Note

To make the settings described in the following sections, go to Settings > Email Configuration > Email Server Profiles.

Configure server-side synchronization for customer engagement apps and Exchange Online

By default, the Microsoft Exchange Online email server profile is created for customer engagement apps (such as Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Marketing, Dynamics 365 Field Service, and Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation), and should be your first choice. If you want to use your own profile, and you use customer engagement apps and Exchange Online—and both services are located on the same tenant—use the following settings in your email server profile.

Settings	Recommendation
Name	Enter a name for the new email server profile
Advanced Settings
Process Emails from	Specify the date and time from which you want the new email server profile to process emails.

If you want to use one set of credentials to process emails with Outlook or Exchange

Using one account to process email to all mailboxes is easier to maintain, but requires using an account that has access to all mailboxes in Outlook or Exchange. The account must have impersonation rights on Exchange. If that single account is compromised, all mailboxes using that account will be compromised. You can configure the Exchange impersonation scope to limit which mailboxes an account can impersonate. More information: Configure impersonation

Settings	Recommendation
Incoming Connection
Authenticate Using	Credentials Specified in Email Server Profile
User Name	The username that has impersonation rights on Exchange
Password	The password of the username.
Use Impersonation	Yes Note that setting Use Impersonation to No (delegation) isn't supported for syncing appointments, contacts, and tasks.
Use same settings for Outgoing	Yes
Advanced Settings
Process Emails from	Specify the date and time from which you want the new email server profile to process emails.

If you want to use individual credentials to process emails with Outlook or Exchange

An alternative to using a single account to process emails is using individual accounts. This method requires more maintenance effort, but avoids focusing security on a single account. If you want each user account to synchronize with Outlook or Exchange and you're not using the Microsoft Exchange Online email server profile, make the following settings in the email server profile.

Settings	Recommendation
Incoming Connection
Authenticate Using	Credentials Specified by a User or Queue
Use Impersonation	No
Use same settings for Outgoing	Yes
Advanced Settings
Process Emails from	Specify the date and time from which you want the new email server profile to process emails.

Make the following settings for each user mailbox.

Credentials	Recommended settings
Allow to Use Credentials for Email Processing	Yes
User Name	The username for the mailbox
Password	The password for the mailbox

Considerations

• Using individual credentials to process emails will accumulate against the number of MaximumConcurrentConnections. This method is generally recommended for a small number of mailboxes.
• Using individual credentials or one set of credentials is subject to password expiration policies. Passwords need to be updated on the mailbox or email server profile when a password is changed.
• The Process Emails from date on the email server profile applies to all mailboxes associated with that profile. If you need to set a different Process Emails from date on a subset of mailboxes, we recommend that you use a separate email server profile or set the Process Email Received After column on the mailbox to the date you want.

Note

When a mailbox is synchronized for the first time, server-side synchronization will use the Process Emails From date on the email server profile to determine how far back emails should be synchronized relative to the Received On date for the emails in the Exchange mailbox. The last email processed in any synchronization cycle will be used to set the Process Emails From date on the mailbox record. Subsequent synchronization cycles will then reference the Process Emails From date on the mailbox to control how far back server side synchronization will search for emails.

There may be times when you need to set the Process Emails From date on the mailbox table to a previous date in order to reprocess emails. One such example may be to account for emails which were synchronized but then accidentally deleted from Dynamics 365. Another example is if an email wasn't within the Inbox folder when the mailbox was processed. Moving the email back into the Inbox folder after it was already processed won't result in that email being processed because the Process Emails From date on the mailbox would likely be later than the Received On date of the email. In this case, the Process Emails From attribute can be added to the Mailbox form and updated to a value to reflect the time period from which you need to reprocess emails.

Note that server-side synchronization will always utilize the greater value between the Process Emails From date on the email server profile and the mailbox record.

See also

Server-side synchronization
Troubleshooting server-side synchronization