Using Microsoft 365 Business (Office 365 Exchange servers)

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Microsoft sells a service named Microsoft 365 Business (previously called “Office 365”) that includes hosted email service.

If you use a Microsoft 365 Business plan that include “hosted email” on their Exchange servers, the rest of this page explains how to set things up to have the Microsoft servers handle all your email, rather than having email handled by Tiger Technologies.

This page applies only to “Microsoft 365 Business” plans.

This is not the right page if you use the Microsoft 365 Family, Microsoft 365 Personal, or Microsoft 365 Apps plans (without “Business” in their names).

Those plans don’t offer Microsoft-hosted email; they just include a subscription to the Outlook email program that connects to your mailboxes on our servers, like any other mail program. You don’t need to do the things described on this page to make that work. See our pages about Outlook for Windows or Outlook for Mac instead.

Getting started

If you sign up with Microsoft 365 Business email, they’ll suggest that you update the “DNS nameservers” to point everything at the Microsoft servers by default, then add individual DNS records at Microsoft to point parts of your website back at our servers using an “IP address” or “FQDN” (fully qualified domain name).

However, doing things that way leads to the top-level “http://example.com” links being unreliable (because you’d need to point them at an IP address “A record” that may change).

Instead, you should use the other method that Microsoft supports: keep the DNS nameservers with our company, then add DNS records here that point just the email at the Microsoft servers.

On this page:

Verification of domain name ownership

Microsoft may first need to verify that you are the owner of your domain name. The usual way they’ll do this is by telling you to add a “TXT record” that looks something like “MS=ms12345678”.

If so:

  1. Login to your Tiger Technologies “My Account” control panel (having trouble?).
  2. If your account is a Web hosting account, click Domain Name Options.
  3. Click Edit DNS Zone.
  4. Click Add New Entry.
  5. Choose TXT record and click Continue.
  6. Leave the setting as “TXT record for example.com” and click Continue.
  7. Enter the “MS=ms...” text provided by Microsoft as the TXT data. Leave the TTL set to the default. If desired, you can enter a comment in the Optional Note field. Then click Save to save the values.

Wait two minutes, then you can return to the Microsoft 365 Business setup screen and tell them to verify it.

Adding new Microsoft 365 Business DNS entries

Each Microsoft 365 Business customer is told a different set of DNS entries that need to be added on our servers. To see yours:

  1. On the main “Admin” page at Microsoft 365 Business, find the “domains” section and click Manage your website and email domains.
  2. Locate your domain name and click the Verified link.
  3. Click the small drop-down arrow to the right of DNS records created automatically.

This will display the DNS records that you need to add to our control panel for your domain.

If you’re a technically advanced user, you can then use our control panel to manually enter the DNS records they show. If you’re not comfortable doing this yourself, you can take a screen shot of the settings and send it to us by email, and we’ll add them for you during normal business hours.

Note that Microsoft may describe their SRV records in this (nonstandard) format: 

TYPE  SERVICE            PROTOCOL
SRV   _sip               _tls
SRV   _sipfederationtls  _tcp

You would enter these in our control panel as service records for _sip._tls.example.com and _sipfederationtls._tcp.example.com, respectively.

The chances are that the DNS records they want you to add will look like this (converted to standard “DNS zone” format): 

example.com. MX 0 example-com.mail.protection.outlook.com.
example.com. TXT "v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com include:tigertech.net a/24 -all"
autodiscover.example.com. CNAME autodiscover.outlook.com.
lyncdiscover.example.com. CNAME webdir.online.lync.com.
msoid.example.com. CNAME clientconfig.microsoftonline-p.net.
sip.example.com. CNAME sipdir.online.lync.com.
_sipfederationtls._tcp.example.com. SRV 100 1 5061 sipfed.online.lync.com.
_sip._tls.example.com. SRV 100 1 443 sipdir.online.lync.com.

There may also be a TXT record that looks like this, but with a different number instead of “00000000”: 

example.com. TXT "MS=ms00000000"

Always double-check these records with Microsoft.

Although the sample records above are correct for most domain names, Microsoft occasionally tells people to use different ones. It’s always wise to check all of this in the Microsoft “Admin” page.

After adding the DNS records, it may take up to 30 minutes for your email to be routed through Microsoft 365 Business.

The SPF record above is slightly different than the one Microsoft recommends on their website. That’s intentional and okay: It just includes an additional section that ensures that scripts on your website (such as WordPress) can also send email through our servers without trouble.

Copying existing Microsoft 365 Business DNS entries

If you’re transferring a domain name to us that already uses Microsoft 365 Business for mail, we’ll usually automatically import the existing DNS records so you don’t have to add them manually.

Can I point just one address at Microsoft 365 Business servers and leave other addresses with Tiger Technologies?

The way that Microsoft 365 Business “Exchange” servers work requires that you point all email for the domain name at their servers, and that they manage all the addresses involved with it. So it’s all or nothing: It’s not possible to use it for just a single address at a domain name with the other addresses remaining with us.

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