Auto-discovery for Outlook (via IMAP / POP3)

Axigen Documentation

Updated: October 5, 2022

The following article will show you how to configure auto-discovery for Microsoft Outlook by updating the axigen.cfg file.

Note: This article was built using Outlook 2016.

For Outlook 2010, please review Microsoft documentation on automatic user account configurations here.

This article was built on the following Axigen environment:

  • Single server

  • Server level settings

  • Autogenerated SSL certificates for POP3S, IMAPS, SMTPS

  • Signed SSL certificate for HTTPS

You can configure Auto-discovery in Axigen for Microsoft Outlook 2016 by simply following these steps:

1. Open axigen.cfg

2. Set the flags that enable Auto-discovery to “yes” for the protocols you wish to enable and provide the hostnames and ports corresponding to the IMAP(S), POP(S), and SMTP(S) protocols to be advertised by the Auto-discovery feature.

3. In your DNS server, configure an entry with the name autodiscover.youremaildomain.tld, such as:

4. Test your configuration with Outlook and the Axigen logs

  • Open Microsoft Outlook and go to "Add Account"

  • Provide your Name, email address and password and click "Next"

  • Click on "Finish" after the Auto-discovery process is completed.

In the background, an HTTPS POST request is initiated:

Microsoft Outlook 2016 initiates only HTTPS requests for Auto-discovery.

If HTTPS Auto-discovery connection failed (using POST), it will failover on HTTP (using GET) - this will also fail as Axigen does not support this method.

The request is traceable in everything.txt (log level set to "Protocol Communication") and should be similar to: