Outbound Email

Sending mail out of Actionstep is relatively simple. All you need to do is specify the SMTP settings and Actionstep takes care of the rest.

Inbound Email

There are three ways to get mail into Actionstep:

1. POP Mailbox on your domain. You can create a new mailbox on your existing domain and enter the connection details into Actionstep. Actionstep will then connect to this mailbox every 5 minutes (or whenever a user clicks "check for new mail") and download all messages in this mailbox.
   
   

2. Mailgun Wildcard: As an alternative to a POP email address on your domain Actionstep can create a Mailgun subdomain for you (typically <anything>@<your <matter ID>@<your organization key>.actionstep.com). Any email sent to this subdomain will be instantly received by Actionstep (rather than waiting 5 minutes). You can select this option when you first signup for Actionstep.
   

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   This option takes 48 hours after signing up for your new system before it becomes available due to verification.

   
   

3. Outlook / Gmail Plugins: If you have one of our plugins installed in Outlook or Gmail then you can instantly copy the email and attachments to Actionstep from within those applications. Note: the plugins use the API to connect directly so you do not require a POP or Mailgun subdomain if you use this method exclusively. See Google Gadget or Installing the Office Plugin.

   
   

POP Mailbox on Your Domain

The POP mailbox is a mailbox that Actionstep uses to send and receive email. We recommend creating a new mailbox in your existing email system* - treat this like adding a new employee to your team - with an email address that makes sense to you (actions@yourfirm.com, matters@yourfirm.com etc.). The new mailbox can be provided by any email provider that supports POP3 (Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook365/Exchange, your ISP etc.). Actionstep collects all mail from this mailbox to deliver to the relevant email users / actions / matters etc. within the Actionstep system. This mailbox can be either a single address (example.address@email.com) or a catchall address (*@email.com). A catchall address is definitely the recommended way to do this and will enable many more email features within Actionstep.**. Actionstep does not provide Mailbox hosting but we can recommend providers if you need help.

**If you are unsure of your mailbox type assume it is a single address mailbox. 

*** For directions on how to configure a gmail / Google Apps catch-all mailbox click here.

How to Find your POP Settings

Your POP settings are set by your email provider.

Gmail Example

The gmail.com settings can be found by clicking on the settings icon and selecting Settings - Forwarding and POP/IMAP then clicking Configuration Instructions at the bottom of the screen. On the next screen select POP then Other and you will see the page below. These are the settings we need to enter into the Actionstep Email Preferences page.

Entering the POP and SMTP settings into Actionstep

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Spam Filter Settings

If you use Actionstep's SMTP servers to send mail then you need to register these IP addresses in the SPF settings of your DNS configuration to prevent your outgoing emails being marked as spam. Update your SPF or Sender-ID record to include the following:

v=spf1 a mx ptr include:_spf.actionstep.com ~all

If you already have an existing SPF record, simply amend it with:

include:_spf.actionstep.com

 If your SPF record contains an "~all" then make sure the addition is before the all. The "~all" should always be at the end.

Spam Settings Video

Email Aliases

Here you can setup the Email Aliases and their corresponding users within Actionstep:

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 Email Size Limits

The mail size limit will depend on the route that the message takes through the Internet and the capabilities of the mail servers on each end. Most mail servers will handle messages up to 10MB and, even though Actionstep can handle larger messages, our recommendation is to stay within this limit to avoid unpredictable results. This applies to email sent from, and received into, Actionstep.

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Setting Up a Wildcard Mailbox on Gmail / Google Apps

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1. Sign in to the Google Admin console
2. From the dashboard, click Apps, then click Google Apps > Gmail > User settings.
3. (Free edition) In the Catch-all address section, select the Discard radio button. (Other editions) In the Email routing section, select the Discard radio button.
4. Click Save changes.

Wildcard and Microsoft Exchange

The Wildcard capability when using a Microsoft Exchange Server account depends on whether you are using standalone Exchange (hosted or on-premise) or if Exchange is part of Office365.

Standalone Exchange 

The procedure for setting up a wildcard mailbox on standalone Exchange servers will depend on the version of Exchange and local settings.  This needs to be setup by the qualified IT individual who manages your Exchange server.

Office 365 Exchange

A wildcard mailbox is not supported as a standard feature in Office 365 however you can achieve the same effect by setting up a relay rule.

Requirements: 

•  Available for Office 365 Medium Business, the Enterprise plans and the new “Business” plan.

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  It will notwork on the Small Business plan due to no support for transport rules

  
  

• All your mailboxes must be on Office 365 
• The MX records must point to Office 365

Basic Procedure:

1. Create a Distribution List & add all users as members (allusers@domain.com)
2. Create a Dedicated Mailbox to Catch emails e.g. actions@domain.com
3. Set the DomainType to “InternalRelay” (Doing this will make the Rules to take precedence)
4. Create a Rule as below:
   1. If the Sender "Outside the Organization"
   2. Except if the recipient is member of allusers@domain.com 

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