External emails not sending when scheduling conference

[giwm]

This is just an FYI for anyone that runs into it and is searching for a solution. Maybe I save one person 30 minutes... worth it.

I was troubleshooting why emails to external participants are not sent/received when using Schedule Conference using the 3CX (direct eMail) option for calendar. Internal emails work fine.

Solution: We use an unauthenticated email account to send all emails from 3CX, as they've always been intended (very intentionally so, actually) to never leave our organization. Same setup for things like scanners - no one needs to accidentally scan confidential documents to an external recipient. This worked fantastic and is fully allowed by 3CX.

HOWEVER: This doesn't work when you're doing webmeetings for external participants. The route you take to solve this would generally fall into one of two categories:
- Authenticate the email account
- Keep the account anonymous but allow just that account to relay (setup of this is up to you and depends on what email server you use).

Problem solved.

 

[VoIPTools]

You don't know how many hundreds of times (literally) I've had to explain the concept of "relay". Whether you are sending emails through Google, or Microsoft Exchange, or some other SMTP server, the problem is the same. You MUST configure your SMTP server to allow relay.

It's really hard to explain to the uninitiated that yes, you can send an email from an authenticated Outlook client to an external email address, but that doesn't mean other clients can! Spread the word!

 

[giwm]

I would caution against going the open relay route, especially if you don't know what you're doing. When I used to work at a school, we discovered that the former staff had our Exchange box as an open relay accessible to the internet. Russia loved bouncing emails through us.

 

[VoIPTools]

+100 Agreed!