Planning; Microsoft Exchange Server
If you want to integrate e-mail with Microsoft® Business Solutions CRM, you must use Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server or Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. Another application that benefits from Active Directory®, Exchange is an enterprise messaging system that is versatile enough to accommodate a wide range of organizations. As with Active Directory and Microsoft CRM, Exchange requires planning before it is deployed. Numerous documents are available from Microsoft that outlines how to plan, deploy, and operate Exchange. For more information about planning Exchange Server, see one or more of the following resources:
Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server Upgrade Series, located at
Exchange 2000 Capacity and Topology Calculator, located at
https://www.microsoft.com/exchange/techinfo/planning/2000/ExchangeCalculator.asp
Exchange 2000 Planning Guide, located at
Exchange Planning Job Aids, located at
Exchange Server 2003 Deployment Guide, located at
https://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/2003/library/depguide.mspx
Planning an Exchange Server 2003 Messaging System
https://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/2003/library/messsyst.mspx
Microsoft CRM-Exchange E-Mail Router
The Microsoft CRM-Exchange E-mail Router (also called the Router) is a software component that provides an interface between the Microsoft CRM system and Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003. E-mail will come into the Microsoft CRM system through this Router, which is installed on your Exchange Server computer. The figure below shows the relationship between an Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 server and a Microsoft CRM server.
For incoming and outgoing e-mail to be captured, the Router component needs to be installed on one or more Exchange servers in your organization. As messages arrive, the Router takes a copy of the message and determines whether the message is relevant to Microsoft CRM. If so, the message is delivered to the Microsoft CRM server, and an e-mail activity record is created.
Note E-mail sent between users on the same Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 system (intranet e-mail) will be processed by the Router only if it is sent from a Microsoft CRM client.
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Inbound Microsoft CRM-Exchange E-mail Router
As e-mail messages are sent from Microsoft CRM, they are delivered by the Router to the Exchange server, which uses its routing process to deliver the message to the Internet.
To make sure that all incoming messages are checked to determine whether they are relevant to Microsoft CRM, it is important that you identify where messages come in from the Internet to your organization. A general rule is that the Router be installed on these Exchange servers.
Microsoft CRM-Exchange E-Mail Router Placement Considerations
Microsoft CRM integrates with Exchange server at the point where e-mail messages enter and leave your organization. All Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 servers are also Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) hosts, meaning that they have the ability to send and receive e-mail messages from other SMTP hosts, even on the Internet. Your organization will likely manage Internet messages in one of three ways:
Exchange front-end SMTP servers
Exchange mailbox servers with one or more SMTP Connectors
Exchange mailbox servers with no SMTP Connectors
How your organization manages inbound and outbound SMTP messages will determine where you install the Microsoft CRM-Exchange E-mail Router component.
Inbound SMTP
Which servers receive inbound SMTP messages from the Internet is defined by Domain Name System (DNS) with Mail Exchange (MX) records. Your organization likely has more than one MX record defined for your SMTP domain (adventure-works.com). Each MX record is assigned a preference value, which is used by sending SMTP hosts to determine the preferred SMTP server to which to send e-mail. For example, adventure-works.com has three MX records defined for adventure-works.com:
Adventure-works.com MX preference=10, mail exchanger = SMTP1.adventure-works.com Adventure-works.com MX preference=20, mail exchanger = SMTP2.adventure-works.com Adventure-works.com MX preference=30, mail exchanger = SMTP3.adventure-works.com
Each MX record has an associated SMTP host; the host has a record associated with a TCP/IP address:
SMTP1.adventure-works.com internet address = 192.168.34.20 SMTP2.adventure-works.com internet address = 192.168.34.21 SMTP2.adventure-works.com internet address = 192.168.34.22
When messages are sent to adventure-works.com, the sending SMTP host retrieves the adventure-works.com MX records from DNS and chooses the MX record with the lowest preference value. (If there is more than one MX record with the same value, one is chosen randomly.) The SMTP host then resolves the SMTP host name associated with the MX record to a TCP/IP address and then sends the SMTP message to that address.
This means that all SMTP servers in your organization with associated MX records can receive SMTP mail and should have the Router component installed.
Many organizations have components between the Internet and Exchange servers. These components-firewalls, virus scanners, spam filters, or UNIX hosts-receive SMTP messages from the Internet, perform their tasks, and then send the messages on to the Exchange organization. In this case, the network component uses a mechanism to determine to which Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 server to send the SMTP message. Typically, the mechanism is DNS or a static configuration that specifies TCP/IP addresses of one or more Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 servers. When a network component receives messages from the Internet and then passes the SMTP messages to one or more Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 servers, you must determine which Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 servers are configured to receive messages, and then install the Router on those servers.
Outbound SMTP
In an Exchange organization, every Exchange server is an SMTP host and can potentially send SMTP messages to the Internet. Some organizations with one or two Exchange servers will allow each server to send directly to the Internet. Other larger organizations will configure an SMTP connector and specify SMTP bridgehead servers that will be responsible for sending SMTP messages to the Internet. In either case, all Exchange servers in an organization understand, based on the configuration of the Exchange organization, how to route SMTP messages to the Internet. This means that if you configure the Router on an Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 server that receives messages from the Internet, but is not configured to send SMTP message to the Internet, the Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 server will route the SMTP message to an Exchange server that is configured to send outbound SMTP messages. If you have installed the Router on all Exchange servers in your organization that will receive inbound SMTP messages from the Internet, these same Exchange servers will receive outbound SMTP messages from Microsoft CRM and will route those messages through the Exchange organization to the Internet, as shown in the following figure.
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Outbound Microsoft CRM-Exchange E-mail Router
Creating a Microsoft CRM SMTP Subdomain
Another option when planning your Exchange Microsoft CRM integration is to create a new SMTP subdomain for Microsoft CRM. This way, Microsoft CRM messages will still flow through the Exchange organization, but they will be managed differently than non-Microsoft CRM messages.
The primary advantage to this configuration is that your Exchange servers that accept inbound SMTP messages from the Internet will not have the additional overhead of inspecting each SMTP message to determine whether it is relevant to Microsoft CRM. Messages destined for the new Microsoft CRM subdomain are sent to a different Exchange SMTP server that may only manage Microsoft CRM SMTP messages.
For example, adventure-works.com has 5,000 Exchange users. Of those users, 250 are Microsoft CRM-enabled. The adventure-works.com inbound SMTP servers receive approximately 50,000 SMTP messages a day (10 per user). The 250 Microsoft CRM users receive approximately 2,500 SMTP messages a day. So the Adventure Works Exchange servers configured as inbound SMTP servers will need to evaluate 50,000 messages each day to identify 2,500 messages destined for Microsoft CRM (five percent).
By creating a new Microsoft CRM SMTP subdomain, the 2,500 SMTP messages sent to the Microsoft CRM users noted above will be directed to a Microsoft CRM-specific Exchange server. That server will inspect only those 2,500 messages to determine which are destined for Microsoft CRM.
As you can see, creating a Microsoft CRM subdomain for SMTP messages can easily segregate Microsoft CRM-specific e-mail so that the enterprise SMTP servers are not evaluating each message to determine whether it is relevant to Microsoft CRM.
Creating a new SMTP subdomain requires planning and configuration at several levels. Some of the highlights include:
Identifying and perhaps installing an Exchange server that will accept inbound Microsoft CRM e-mail messages.
Creating a new SMTP subdomain in DNS and adding the appropriate host and MX records.
Configuring a secondary SMTP address for Exchange-enabled users in the default recipient policy in Exchange System Manager. For more information about secondary SMTP addresses in Exchange 2000, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article, "HOW TO: Use Recipient Policies to Control E-mail Addresses in Exchange 2000," located at
support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;319201. The following figure shows an example of a secondary SMTP address.
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Secondary SMTP address
Configuring a secondary SMTP address for Exchange version 5.5 mailboxes in the Exchange 5.5 site (if applicable). For more information about secondary SMTP addresses in Exchange 5.5, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article, "XFOR: How to Configure Exchange with Secondary SMTP Addresses," located at
Configuring the network path from the Internet to the Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 server. This may include modifying router tables, firewall rules, and so on. For more information about connecting your Exchange organization to the Internet, see Chapter 9, "Internet Connectivity," in Exchange 2000 Server Planning and Installation, the printed book included with Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server.
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Adventure Works decides to implement a new SMTP subdomain for Microsoft CRM. It installs a new Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 server that has the Router installed. It also creates a DNS subdomain named CRM.adventure-works.com. In that domain it creates a host record and MX record as follows:
CRM.adventure-works.com MX preference=10, mail exchanger = CRMSMTP1.adventure-works.com CRMSMTP1.adventure-works.com internet address = 192.168.34.23
The only modification in Active Directory is the addition of a secondary SMTP address for Microsoft CRM users. Each Microsoft CRM-enabled user in Active Directory must have an SMTP address that corresponds to the e-mail address assigned to the user in Microsoft CRM. For example, John is a Microsoft CRM-enabled user at Adventure Works. His e-mail address in Microsoft CRM is john@crm.adventure-works.com. He has two e-mail addresses in Active Directory. His primary Active Directory e-mail address is john@adventure-works.com. His secondary Active Directory e-mail address is john@crm.adventure-works.com.
Each user in Microsoft CRM will have an e-mail address with the SMTP domain CRM.adventure-works.com (user@crm.adventure-works.com). This e-mail address will be the primary e-mail address in Microsoft CRM and the secondary e-mail address in Active Directory and Exchange. The following diagram shows this configuration.
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Microsoft CRM SMTP subdomain
In this configuration, Microsoft CRM messages flow as follows:
When a Microsoft CRM user creates an e-mail activity record, the record is created in the database and then relayed to the Router where the message will be delivered to the recipient. It is also possible that the message could be routed to another outbound SMTP server in your organization, depending on how SMTP Connectors are configured.
When a Microsoft CRM user is sent a CRM message from the Internet (to user@crm.adventure-works.com), the message will be delivered to CRMSMTP1.adventure-works.com, where the Router will intercept the message and send a copy to Microsoft CRM. The Exchange server, CRMSMTP1.adventure-works.com, will deliver the message to the user's mailbox based on the secondary SMTP address of the Active Directory and Exchange user.
In organizations that have several thousand users, but maybe only several hundred Microsoft CRM users, this configuration can help mitigate the impact of Microsoft CRM on busy corporate inbound SMTP servers and can segregate inbound Microsoft CRM messages to specific servers in your organization.
The Router allows for integration between Microsoft CRM and Microsoft Exchange. The Router should be installed on all Exchange servers that accept inbound messages from the Internet and the HTTP and SOAP protocols must be able to pass between the Microsoft CRM and Exchange servers. In some environments it may be desirable to create an SMTP sub-domain for Microsoft CRM so that Microsoft CRM messages are segregated from other messaging traffic. Either way, the Router adds valuable integration between your Exchange environment and Microsoft CRM.