If you're a user of the MDaemon email server, and own either an iPhone, Android device or Windows mobile, it's quite likely at some point you'll want to synchronise your calendar, contacts and tasks etc. While the set-up steps for configuring MDaemon and the devices themselves are very straightforward, because MDaemon needs to be visible to the outside world, there are some networking considerations to be aware of.

In the last few weeks we have started seeing an increase in support requests relating to email delivery problems that are outside of the control of the MDaemon server. Specifically this happens when companies are relying on an ISP mail platform to provide POP3 mailboxes and SMTP services to deliver their mail to and from MDaemon. In this article I want to point out why the method you choose to get email in and out of MDaemon is so important and how you can redesign and often simplify your mail platform to minimise the effects of changes that are 'outside of your control'.

If you use our email server software, MDaemon Messaging Server, and you've ever called our support team with issues relating to being unable to send emails, you may have noticed that we often perform a spam blacklist check. To perform these checks we use just one of a range of useful tools over at the mxtoolbox.com website. We've been using this site for several years as in addition to the blacklist checking you can also do things like query a domain's Mail DNS and SPF records, check whether the SMTP port is answering and even obtain an explanation of message header information. An essential tool to add to your favorites if you are a mail administrator!

So on to part 2 of my look at the new MDaemon 13 beta... I mentioned ActiveSync policies in my last post, well version 13 also sees the addition of one extra small, but very nice feature, in the ability to simplify the self sign-up process for mobile devices using the Autodiscover process. By removing the necessity to know the public DNS name or IP address of your MDaemon server, all a user now needs to connect their mobile device is their email address and password.