Business Email Problems

[Cadder]

Hello,

When we purchased our website, we requested email addresses with them. The email addresses are to our domain but are hosted (?) by Stackmail. From what I can see, there is no associated calendar with this service.

We access our emails on the Outlook desktop app. Whenever I accept a meeting it links to my personal calendar, so clients are receiving responses from a hotmail account. Is there a way to connect a calendar to my email address and it link to our domain?

So let's use an example of a business email of [email protected] and a personal email of [email protected]. I accept a calendar invite with the business email but the response is sent from the personal email.

It's a bizarre situation but I'm hoping someone who knows their stuff can advise.

 

[Cadder]

If you use outlook I'd suggest getting an o365 sub and doing email and calendar through O365 and it'll make easier.

Can I get that to link to my business domain email addresses?

 

[Cadder]

Yep. You just setup the domain and link the MX records in DNS on there. Super simple and there is a nice easy guide

Thank you very much! I'll have a look into that.

 

[Cadder]

I've done it a million times, so let me know if you need help when you set it up.

Looks like we're ready to jump into this now. If your offer still stands I'd massively appreciate your help - even if just in the form of advice. We have not long concluded a meeting where the trial has been set to commence no later than next Monday, with the full implementation required by the beginning of April.

Some questions that cropped up in our meeting earlier today:

• Which email address to sign up to O365 with? My own company email or the admin one - [email protected]?
• There are two of us currently working within the business. Is it possible for one to be on the business premium subscription and another on standard? Is it best the subscriptions be consistent?
• If we go for Business Premium do we still have to purchase additional email addresses? ie admin, accounts, enquiries and so on.
• Is it best to go direct with Microsoft or would a CSP (Nimmbus) be just as good?
• What other recommendations are there to make sure this is a huge improvement when we switch from my personal OneDrive?

I'll keep digging to find the answers to these questions but if this area is something anyone reading instantly knows and can advise on, it would be hugely appreciated.

 

[Cadder]

Trying to get this set up this week. Was supposed to be Monday but delayed.

Is there any reason why direct would be better than a CSP? Nimmbus is offering it cheaper than Microsoft themselves is all.

 

[Cadder]

Just on this... your replies, are you doing them from outlook on desktop or mobile? If so you may just have two accounts configured in the app and outbound is defaulting to your hotmail?

99% on desktop. Only occasionally do I respond on mobile.

I don't have a great deal of knowledge on this side of things but my current webmail host (Stackmail) seems to be extremely basic and only provides mail, no calendar. It seems like my Outlook app on Windows 10 is picking up invitations to my work email but accepting them to my personal email - as in, finding the next available calendar to associate it from.

 

[Cadder]

Ah OK - then yes you should change to a proper Office 365 set up - how do you currently license word, excel etc? How many employees are we talking?

I have office 365 personal and the two of us work off that. The OneDrive stores the company filing system as well as our own personal files.

All documents are produced in the same account that accepts calendar invitations.

At the moment there are two employees and a subcontractor who uses their own license. We're looking at taking on more this year though but it will be a small team - say maximum 10 employees.

 

[Cadder]

ah ok then you really want to be keeping everything separate, no wonder things are getting crossed. You should really have an Office 365 Business account for your work stuff which will allow you to have email domain etc and then your personal one for personal stuff.

Microsoft 365 Apps for Business should do you, it's 7.90 ex VAT per user a month unless you need advanced security/compliance (I'd guess not based on the above) or stuff like a phone number in Teams, host webinars etc

Just looking at the pricing plans. Wouldn't Business Standard (£9.40/month) be better suited since it includes the Exchange? 365 Apps doesn't have the exchange so our emails wouldn't be hosted, is that right?

 

[Cadder]

Cheers, I'll crack on with that and ask our web designer to switch us over to the new system from Stackmail.

Thanks everyone.

 

[Cadder]

Just finished a 40 minute call with Microsoft support. I think I made things messy when I set up my business email address both as a personal account and an organisation account. The advisor helped me separate them and sign up as organisation administrator with a (business dedicated) gmail account to keep it separate, then manage my domain from there. Trial has started now. Website designer has been given an admin account so they can transfer/migrate us from Stackmail to Microsoft Exchange.

At this point I am still confused by how complicated the Microsoft system is. I somehow feel that there is an admin/organisation owner account just floating somewhere doing nothing, since I couldn't figure out who owned the organisation my account belonged to.

I also don't know how this affects my Teams organisation that I am part of, and the "personal" one I am logged into as my business account.

I accept I have contributed to the mess through my lack of knowledge and over-confidence. I would never have been able to sort it out if it weren't for the advisor at Microsoft.

 

[Cadder]

Best to separate business and personal stuff, imo.

Keep business user/identity for business related things, and then personal kept well away from it.

People don't generally see emails from @outlook.com as all that serious if relating to a business, people will expect from @companydomain.com etc.

Exactly, which is why I had to get this all set up. Current system has my work email accepting calendar invitations but the responses coming from my personal hotmail. The admin/organisation owner account is a gmail account with the business name in. It is just for owning the organisation, not for anything client-facing.

Will take it step by step. I want to see our emails migrated and our calendars properly hosted, linked to the business email addresses. Then I will look to take it further.

Is there any benefit to completing the branding on the Office 365 admin portal?