Question Please help with email autodiscovery

[nj2la96]

Server operating system version

Ubuntu 24.04

Plesk version and microupdate number

18.0.62

newbie here desperately seeking some guidance on setting up autodiscovery for emails. I have a VPS server that has about 30 domains for different clients. Some use emails on my server and I need to configure the email server to automatically configure itself when a client sets up their email. I am aware that some versions of outlook and 365 don’t allow this, but iPhone users should be able to set their emails up using this feature. I have changed my nameservers to point directly to plesk using ns1 and ns2.domain.com directed to plesk IP, I have added a cname record called autodiscover that points to the mail.domain.com. I have activated all possible options within plesk to allow autodiscovery but yet it doesn’t work. If I try to set an email I on my phone, it then asks for incoming and outgoing server information, which shouldn’t happen. There are no steps to follow, to the best of my knowledge, plesk is supposed to handle xml creation and I don’t have to do it manually.

Can anyone please advice on the steps to follow to set up auto discover through their own experience? The documentation on plesk isn’t thorough

 

[Kaspar@Plesk]

Hi there, autodiscovery isn't support for iOS devices. Instead email profiles can be loaded by scanning an QR code (or visiting the link from the QR code).

See the "To set up a mail account on an iPhone automatically" section on this page:

Access from iPhone

The instructions provided in this section were verified against iOS 13.5. You can set up your mail account on an iPho...

docs.plesk.com

 

[nj2la96]

Hi there, autodiscovery isn't support for iOS devices. Instead email profiles can be loaded by scanning an QR code (or visiting the link from the QR code).

See the "To set up a mail account on an iPhone automatically" section on this page:

Access from iPhone

The instructions provided in this section were verified against iOS 13.5. You can set up your mail account on an iPho...

docs.plesk.com

Thank you for responding.

It actually worked for one of my domains but I can't replicate it. Does that means that technically auto discover does not work in Plesk? It doesn't seem practical to send QR codes to every client or have a different process for phone and laptops. For instance, I have migrated a client who has 13 mailboxes, I would either need to send 13 separate QR codes or have them enter incoming and outgoing server information to configure email accounts. Surely there has to be an easier method.

 

[Kaspar@Plesk]

It actually worked for one of my domains but I can't replicate it. Does that means that technically auto discover does not work in Plesk? It doesn't seem practical to send QR codes to every client or have a different process for phone and laptops. For instance, I have migrated a client who has 13 mailboxes, I would either need to send 13 separate QR codes or have them enter incoming and outgoing server information to configure email accounts. Surely there has to be an easier method.

That's a great inconvenience for sure. However the autodiscovery method used by iOS is proprietary and limited to work with major email providers only (like Apple's own mail service, Gmail and Microsoft services). Unfortunately any of the default autodiscovery methods are incompatible with Apple mail clients and Apple does not provide any (open) methods for autodiscovery.

The profile link (used by the QR code) are the only alternative to manually configuring mail accounts. You can utilize these profile links to help your clients setup their email accounts on iOS devives. It does not neccerly has to be an QR code, can be a directly link too. Which you can share with your customers. The profile links following partrn https://<domain>/email.mobileconfig?emailaddress=<email address>

 

[nj2la96]

Thank you so much. This is invaluable information. I have spent the last 2 weeks making every possible DNS and nameserver entry trying to get this to work. Even my VPS providers (fasthost) were stumped trying to figure this out.

I will give your recommendation of sending profile links instead, believe it or not, this might be the most practical as you can't always have access to Plesk to obtain a QR code or sending a QR code to a clients phone is difficult to scan if they intend to setup the email on the same device. I definitely will give that a go. Thanks for the advice.