Autodiscover & Autoconfig for Outlook, Thunderbird & Mobile Devices
Desktop Clients
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What is Autodiscover & Autoconfig ?
They are web services that are used by a growing number of applications and which help in configuring your mobile devices and desktop clients. Autodiscover is used by mobile devices including iPhone, iPod, iPad, and Android devices, while Autoconfig is used by Thunderbird. Autodiscover used to be supported in older versions of Outlook, but it's not supported any more for IMAP account setup.
These services allow you to configure an e-mail account by only entering your e-mail address and password, without having to worry about incoming servers, outgoing servers, or ports. All communication is configured to be secured through SSL by default. However, the implementation is heavily dependent on the software maker ( Apple, Microsoft ) and some versions have better integrations than others.
DNS Configuration
You'll need to add two A type records in the DNS of the domain for which you'd like to enable these services. They are:
Basic and Enhanced Accounts:
A record hostname | Points to |
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autodiscover.<yourdomain.com> | 69.28.212.195 |
autoconfig.<yourdomain.com> | 69.28.212.195 |
Configuring the e-mail clients after this DNS change becomes a lot easier.
Outlook:
Go to Tools -> Account Settings and click on New
Click on Next
Enter the user's full name, his e-mail address and password. Click on Next
Outlook will search for the web service...
Allow autodiscover.emailarray.com/AutoDiscover/AutoDiscover.xml to configure the client.
The account is now configured. Click on Finish
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Exchange Accounts:
A record hostname | Points to |
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autodiscover.<yourdomain.com> | 69.172.250.30 |
autoconfig.<yourdomain.com> | 69.172.250.30 |