Server-side synchronization entities

Article
11/28/2016

Applies To: Dynamics 365 (online), Dynamics 365 (on-premises), Dynamics CRM 2016, Dynamics CRM Online

In Microsoft Dynamics 365 (online & on-premises), server-side synchronization provides an interface between Microsoft Dynamics 365 and one or more Exchange servers or POP3 servers for incoming email, and one or more SMTP or Exchange servers for outgoing email. It retrieves and evaluates emails for relevance to Dynamics 365 and accordingly creates corresponding email activities in Dynamics 365. It also picks emails from Dynamics 365 and sends them through the configured email server for Dynamics 365 users and queues. It also allows synchronization of appointments, contacts, and tasks with Exchange Server 2010 and Exchange Server 2013.

With the centralized email configuration, the Dynamics 365 entity model allows having common user interface (UI) settings (like user name, password, email address, and synchronization methods) for users, queues, and forward mailboxes. Each Dynamics 365 user or a queue can have mailboxes, which can be monitored through either server-side synchronization or Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Outlook. The EmailServerProfile entity represents the email server profile for an organization. The Mailbox entity represents the appointments, contacts, and tasks delivery method of the mailbox. Currently, the user entity is restricted to have only one mailbox record per user and the queues entity to have only one mailbox record per queue, as shown in the following illustration.

Email connector entity model

Server-side synchronization offers the following capabilities:

Process emails of a user and a queue using the email address, email delivery method, and credentials from the related mailbox record.
Process appointments, contacts, and tasks.
Use mailbox records to process emails for users and queues having the incoming delivery method set as Forward Mailbox.
Use information from a related email profile record to process emails for all mailboxes.
Prevent email processing for inactive mailboxes or for mailboxes that don’t have an associated email profile.
Automatically relate an associated mailbox to the default email profile when a user or a queue is created with the email delivery method set as server-side synchronization.
Automatically track Microsoft Exchange emails in Dynamics 365 for a user based on the folder-level tracking rules.