Note: Microsoft no longer supports autodiscover for SMTP / IMAP in recent versions of Outlook, so this guide may not be fully applicable for those specific configurations.
What is Autodiscover and What is it Used For?
Autodiscover is a protocol that allows email clients (e.g., Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Microsoft Outlook) to configure server connection parameters for your email address automatically, instead of configuring all parameters manually. This will save you time, especially if you have to configure many accounts.
To use the autodiscover system, make sure that your client supports this feature, as not all email clients currently support it. Furthermore, it is necessary to change the DNS configuration of your domain to add some parameters that will allow you to contact the autodiscover service in an appropriate way.
Configuring Autodiscover for your domain certainly makes it easier for users to first set up their email account and avoids any typos. It is also a very simple configuration to perform and has no additional cost or impact on performance.
The implementation of LS Suite Autodiscover provides IMAP and SMTP parameters for desktop email clients and Microsoft® Exchange ActiveSync for Smartphones.
The Microsoft® Exchange ActiveSync service is available for domains with an Enterprise plan only.
The advantage of using EAS is its easy configuration on mobile devices and the real-time Push notifications for new emails and events in the calendar.
Compatibility
Not all email clients are currently compatible. A list of clients that can host Autodiscover is available below:
| Client | Version | Protocol |
| Microsoft Outlook | 2013 and newer | IMAP and SMTP |
| Microsoft App Mail Contacts and Calendar | Windows 10 | Microsoft® Exchange ActiveSync |
| Mozilla Thunderbird | 60 and newer | IMAP and SMTP |
| Android | latest | Microsoft® Exchange ActiveSync |
| Apple iOS | 12 and newer | Microsoft® Exchange ActiveSync |
Setup Autodiscover through VirtualHost
To guarantee full compatibility with the majority of email clients, we suggest creating your own VirtualHost associated with your domain, in the form autodiscover.mycompany.com with a valid SSL certificate installed. In VirtualHost, you will have to add a 302 redirect to LS Suite's Autodiscover server.
Substitute mycompany.com with the name of your domain.
You can find a VirtualHost example with the redirect rules in the example below:
<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerName autodiscover.mycompany.com
ServerAlias autoconfig.mycompany.com
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^.*config-v1\.1\.xml$ https://autodiscover.lsbox.email/thunderbird.php [NC,R=302,L]
RewriteRule ^.*autodiscover\.xml$ https://autodiscover.lsbox.email/outlook.php [NC,R=302,L]
RewriteRule ^.*autodiscover\.json$ https://autodiscover.lsbox.email/outlook.json.php [NC,R=302,L]
SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile /path/to/ssl.cert
SSLCertificateKeyFile /path/to/ssl.key
</VirtualHost>Alternatively, if you cannot change the virtual host directly, you can create a .htaccess file to insert in the document root of your autodiscover.mycompany.com domain:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^.*config-v1\.1\.xml$ https://autodiscover.lsbox.email/thunderbird.php [NC,R=302,L]
RewriteRule ^.*autodiscover\.xml$ https://autodiscover.lsbox.email/outlook.php [NC,R=302,L]
RewriteRule ^.*autodiscover\.json$ https://autodiscover.lsbox.email/outlook.json.php [NC,R=302,L]Both configurations shown above require a mod_rewrite module enabled in Apache.
Setup Autodiscover through DNS Record
If you do not have the possibility to create a Virtual Host in HTTPS, you can still configure the Autodiscover through a configuration on the DNS domain. It is important to remember that this configuration may not be enough to make the autodiscover compatible on your email client. Access the DNS management panel of your domain's provider and add the following CNAME record as follows:
| Record | Record type | Value |
autoconfig.mycompany.com | CNAME | autodiscover.lsbox.email. |
autodiscover.mycompany.com | CNAME | autodiscover.lsbox.email. |
Export to Sheets
The above setting authorizes your email client to contact the LS Suite autodiscover service to obtain the mail server configuration data for your domain.
The autoconfig record is used by Thunderbird, while autodiscover is used by EAS / Outlook.
Once the above listed records have been added, it can take up to 24 hours for the DNS change to become fully operational.
Verify the Correct Setup of the Autodiscover Records
In order to verify the correct settings for the autodiscover records on your domain, you can run the following nslookup commands from a terminal:
nslookup -q=cname autoconfig.mycompany.com
nslookup -q=cname autodiscover.mycompany.comwhich should respond respectively with the following result:
autoconfig.mycompany.com canonical name = autodiscover.lsbox.email.
autodiscover.mycompany.com canonical name = autodiscover.lsbox.email.
