This article is intended to provide new users of 3Essentials Unified Messaging solution with the steps needed to get up and running with the service. 

Terminology

Let's start by reviewing a few terms you'll see used here. 

Unified Messaging: 3Essentials brand name for it's premium email, messaging and collaboration solution. 

Smartermail: the actual software product running on the server infrastructure that 3Essentials uses to deliver the Unified Messaging solution. 

Postoffice or Mail Domain: a "postoffice" in email terminology refers to all mail boxes associated with a specific domain name.  So, if you own the domain mycompany.com, and want to have email accounts for CEO@mycompany.com, accts_receivable@mycompany.com, sales@mycompany.com... to set up mail services for those users, we first create a "postoffice" on the mail server for "mycompany.com", and then the email users noted can be created above, each having their own mailbox within that postiffice where mail for them will be received, and can be retrieved by them.  Smartermail also uses the term "mail domain" to convey the same concept of "postoffice".   

Mail Domain Administrator: This is an email user in your postoffice that has been "promoted" to have administrative level access to your postoffice/mail domain.  They would be allowed to create and delete other email users in your postoffice, create mailing lists, reset an email users's password, etc.   You will always have at least one mail domain administrator, it's the first one created by us when we set up your mail service initially, and that one will be the Primary Mail Domain Administrator.  But if you wish, you can use your Primary Mail Domain Administrator to promote any other email user to also have Mail Domain Administrator level access. 

Unified Messaging's Smartermail Server Webmail URL: this is the URL for the webmail interface for the Smartermail services on the server where your Unified Messaging mail service will be hosted.  Smartermail's webmail interface is not only used for webmail based access to your email accounts, but it doubles as the administrative interface for you to create and delete users, manage mailing lists, set up auto-responders and forwarders, and a host of other administrative and configuration functions.  So even if you don't intend to use the webmail interface for accessing your mail, you'll need to know the URL in order to exercise those other administrative functions. 

Getting Started

1. You should have been provided a Welcome Email which would have included two critical pieces of information:
   1. Your Unified Messaging's Smartermail Server name
   2. Your Unified Messaging's Smartermail Server Webmail URL
   3. Your Unified Messaging's Smartermail Server IP address 
   4. Your Primary Mail Domain Administrator credentials (username and password)
2. Before you cut over mail from your current solution to your new Unified Messaging service, you want to first create your email accounts within your postoffice.  It's important to create those accounts first before you update your DNS to point mail to our servers, so the mailboxes exist when mail begins to get routed to our mail services.
   • log into your Unified Messaging's Smartermail Server Webmail URL using your Primary Mail Domain Administrator credentials, and follow the instructions here: Unified Messaging: How to create a new email user
3. We strongly recommend you adjust your DNS TTL values on the relevant DNS records (discussed in the next item) down to 5 minutes.
   • This ensures that when you do make the DNS change to start your mail flowing to us, that the change takes effect in 5-10 minutes, minimizing the "some mail goes to your old mail service, some goes to your new mail service" scenario.  
   • Plus, it also ensures that should you experience some unforeseen consequence, you can roll back the DNS change and your rollback would take effect in 5-10 minutes. 
   • If you change your TTL value down to 5 minutes, you will need to wait a time period equal to the prior value before the 5 minute TTL can be considered "active" in Internet DNS.  This means if your TTL was 24 hours, and you reduced it to 5 minutes in anticipation of making this DNS change... you must wait 24 hours from the time you made the TTL change for the 5 minute TTL to be in effect and propagated throughout the Internet. 
4. Update your DNS to point your mail services to us.  The changes necessary will vary slightly depending on your implementation, so the following are general guidelines. The (10) priority assigned to the record could actually be any value, as long as it's the lowest value MX record you have, the lower the number, the higher the priority.  I.e., if you have two MX records, one wtih priority 10 and one with 20, the MX record with priority of 10 will be where your mail is sent to.  The MX with a 20 priority value will only be used if the MX(10) server is unreachable.  If you're unsure about your specific implementation, contact your DNS administrator or our Support team:
   • MX(10)    umX.3essentials.com*
   • *where umX.3essentials.com is your Unified Messaging's Smartermail server name specified in your Welcome Email, i.e., um1.3essentials.com, um2.3essentials.com, etc. 
5. MAIL ACCESS:
   • Configure your email clients to use um1.3essentials.com as their POP, SMTP, and/or IMAP servers.
     • If you prefer to use a hostname like mail.yourdomain.com for your email clients (like MS Outlook), you can.  If your company users something different like pop-mail.yourdomain.com and smtp-mail.yourdomain.com, those will work too.  Simply create (or update existing) A records for those DNS hostnames to resolve to (Your Unified Messaging's Smartermail Server IP address).  This approach may save you from having your user reconfigure the server settings in their mail clients. If you're unsure about your specific implementation, contact your DNS administrator. 
   • Access webmail via https://(your UM Smartermail Server name), i.e. https://um1.3essentials.com 
6. After you feel the cutover has been successful, you can return your DNS TTL values to your previous or desired values.  

Next Steps: Configuring Specific Email Client Software

• Unified Messaging: Configuring Email Client Software (including mobile)
• Sharing Resources: Calendar, Tasks, Contacts, Notes

Getting Help

• Smartermail Help for Users & Domain Administrators: http://help.smartertools.com/SmarterMail/v11/
• Contact 3Essentials Support here