In a previous blog post I explained how to create a new organization (tenant) in Office 365. After the initial creation there’s one (administrative) account and you can start working with that account almost immediately. For example, when you logon to https://outlook.office365.com/owa and use the credentials you entered when creating the new tenant you logon to OWA and you can start sending email, there’s not much to see though at this point 🙂

When you send an email your email address will be admin@inframan.onmicrosoft.com, not nice but it works.

Add a new domain

The first step you want to do is add an additional SMTP domain, in this blog post this will be the domain inframan.nl. Navigate back to the Microsoft Online Portal, select Domains and click on +Add domain. The add domain wizard will show up which consists of three steps:

Click on let’s get started and enter the domain name you want to use:

Click Next and the wizard will show you a DNS record. As a proof of ownership you have to enter this TXT record to your domain in public DNS.

When you have entered the TXT record to public DNS you can use the NSLOOKUP tool to check if the TXT is available:

If so, go back to the Microsoft Online Portal and click Okay, I’ve added the record. Please note that it can take some time before the DNS records are replicated. I typically set my DNS TTL to only 10 minutes, but if your TTL is 24 hours it can take some time… When the test succeeds your new domain is verified:

Click Next to continue to update user accounts with the new SMTP domain, if you don’t want to do this right now click skip this step at the bottom of the page. This is what I typically do at this stage.

You can also create new users accounts, but when you don’t want to at this point click the skip this step at the bottom of the page.

The last step is to update your public DNS with the proper records. In the Get ready to update DNS records window click Next to start the DNS records wizard.

Assuming you don’t want to transfer your DNS to Microsoft select the No, I have an existing website or prefer to manage my own DNS records option and click Next to continue.

You can configure DNS for both Lync Online and Exchange Online. For now, only select the Outlook on the web for email, calendar, and contacts checkbox and click Next to continue.

The wizard will now show all DNS records that are needed for Exchange Online, and you can use these for inbound SMTP mail, for Outlook 2010 and above and for SPF (used for anti-spam):

When you’ve added these records to your public DNS (again, you have to take replication into account) click on Okay, I’ve added the records to continue. When all is well you’ll see a You’re all setup message and you’re done, click Finish.

In my next blog I’ll explain how to add users, both single users as well as bulk users using a CSV file.