Set up outbound email handling with Exchange and other clients

This document guides you through the process of directing all outbound email via Sophos Email. For Exchange, this requires an SMTP Connector to be configured on your Exchange Server.

To set up outbound email handling:

  1. To set up an SMTP connector, follow the instructions for your version of Exchange on Microsoft's website.
  2. When prompted, select Route mail through smart hosts and click + Add.
  3. In the Add smart host dialog that appears, enter the corresponding smart host for your region.
    1. To find the smarthost for your region, sign in to Sophos Central.
    2. Go to Email Gateway > Settings > Domain Settings > Configure External Dependencies.
    3. Click on the outbound settings tab. You will see the Outbound Relay Host associated with your account. (This will be dependent on the region you chose when you signed up for Sophos Email.)

    Region

    Outbound Relay Host

    United States (West)

    relay-us-west-2.prod.hydra.sophos.com

    United States (East)

    relay-us-east-2.prod.hydra.sophos.com

    Germany

    relay-eu-central-1.prod.hydra.sophos.com

    Ireland

    relay-eu-west-1.prod.hydra.sophos.com
  4. Turn off or remove any other Outbound Send Connectors that were previously used for mail filtering.
    Note Failure to do this means your outbound email will still use the older send connectors, and is not routed through Sophos Email. If in doubt, consult Sophos Support.

If you authenticate outgoing email using an SPF record or DKIM, you may need to update your configuration. Replace with or add the SPF record: v=spf1 include:_spf.prod.hydra.sophos.com ~all.

If you are certain that you do not have any third parties sending mail on your behalf, and all your outbound mail is routed through Sophos Email, you can add a hard fail instead: v=spf1 include:_spf.prod.hydra.sophos.com -all.

Note This means that your mail needs to be sent from Sophos Email to be accepted by the receiver's mail servers (if they carry out SPF checks).

Confirm that outbound mail is flowing by sending a outbound mail to an external address.

  1. Sign in to Sophos Central.
  2. Go to Email Gateway > Logs and Reports > Message History.
  3. Change the direction to outbound.
  4. Refresh the screen until you can see the details of the test email you have sent.