Microsoft Exchange 2016 and 2019 Outbound Configuration

Note: Microsoft 2016 and 2019 use the same process for setting up Outbound Transports.

Before you begin this process make sure you add SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and ADSP Records

To properly protect your outbound mail, add your SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and ADSP records while you're in there changing your MX record. 

We have a primer on what all these are for, if you're interested here: https://support.mailroute.net/hc/en-us/articles/360061128614-Email-Authentication-An-Explanation-and-Exploration

We have a Knowledge Base articles for each of these:

• https://support.mailroute.net/hc/en-us/articles/360021568194-Setting-Your-SPF
• https://support.mailroute.net/hc/en-us/articles/115009100687-Implementing-DKIM
• https://support.mailroute.net/hc/en-us/articles/360062946093-Implementing-DMARC-for-the-MailRoute-Outbound-SmartHost-Service

Here's Microsoft's own documentation for this process:  Create a Send connector to route outbound mail through a smart host

Method 1 - Exchange Admin UI

1. Go to the Exchange Administration Center.  Login as an Administrator.
2. In the left-hand column select 'Mail Flow' and go to the 'Send Connectors' tab.
3. Enter a name for reference for the connection. This is entirely up to you but something like MailRoute Outbound would be applicable.
4. Under 'Type' , select 'Custom', and then press Next
5. In the New Send Connector section, choose Route mail through smart hosts.  Tthen click Add (the + button). to add a smarthost
   1. Enter outbound.mailroute.net and click Save.
   2. Click Next.
6. Under Configure Smart host Authentication, select 'None' and then select Next.
7. Click 'Add' to add a new send connector that routes mail to a specified list of domains.  Click Next.
   1. Type: Set this to 'SMTP'
   2. Full Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) : Enter an asterisk (*) to indicate the Send connector applies to messages addressed to all external domains.

   3. Cost: Verify 1 is entered.  A lower value indicates a more preferred route for the domains you specified.

      When you're finished, click 'Save'
       

12.  On the next page, in the Source server section, click  Add (+)  icon.. In the Select a Server dialog box that appears, select one or more Mailbox servers that you want to use to send outbound mail to the smart host. If you have multiple Mailbox servers in your environment, select the ones that can route mail to the smart host. If you have only one Mailbox server, select that one. After you've selected at least one Mailbox server, click Add, click OK, and then click Finish.

After you create the Send connector, it appears in the Send connector list.

You may need to restart the Exchange SMTP / Transport services for the changes to take effect

Method 2 - Powershell

1.  Open the Exchange Management Shell. For more information, see Open the Exchange Management Shell.
    

2. Enter this PowerShell command:

   New-SendConnector -Name "MailRoute Outbound" -AddressSpaces * -Custom -DNSRoutingEnabled $false -SmartHosts outbound.mailroute.net -SmartHostAuthMechanism None

This  creates the Internet Send connector named "MailRoute Outbound" with the following properties:

• 
  The usage type is Custom.
• The Send connector uses smart host routing (the DNSRoutingEnabled parameter is set to the value $false). 
• The smart host's  address is outbound.mailroute.net, and the authentication method is None, because the smart host is configured to listen for connections only from a restricted list of source servers.

• The Send connector is for all external domains (*). The value * is equivalent to the value "SMTP:*;1", where the address space type is SMTP, and the address space cost value is 1.

   

Troubleshooting

• The easiest method of troubleshooting issues with SMTP connectors in Microsoft Exchange is to enable protocol logging.  See Microsoft's article on this here: Protocol Logging in Exchange Server

• The common errors that can happen when trying to configure our service will be logged to your account history in the Control panel -> Account Usage -> Error Log with the exception of incorrect username / password errors, so if you are having a problem please check those error logs.

• If you have questions specifically about configuring or troubleshooting Exchange 2016 please use the Official Microsoft Exchange 2016 Documentation- due to the complexities of Microsoft Exchange we can only provide basic troubleshooting advice.