Outbound Learner Address


Outbound Learner Address is applicable when you use Xeams in front of services like Exchange Online for inbound filtering but Exchange Online for sending outbound emails. Using this feature, you configure Exchange Online to BCC a copy of every email going out, allowing inbound filters in Xeams to improve by learning who is getting emails on the Internet.

Consider the following example:

  • Assume your domain is mycompany.com. Xeams Cloud is filtering emails for this domain for inbound messages.
  • Outbound emails are sent directly from Exchange Online.
  • An in-house user, john.doe@mycompany.com sends an outbound email to a.friend@gmail.com.
  • Your goal is to give credit to replies sent by a.friend@gmail.com. In other words, you want your inbound filtering to improve based on who is receiving outbound messages.
  • This goal is achieved by specifying an Outbound Learner Address in Xeams.

How It Works

This is achieved by configuring the outbound email system, such as Microsoft Exchange Online, to automatically add a new recipient for every outbound email. This new recipient is configured in Xeams as Outbound Learner Address.

The following image demonstrates the actual mail flow.

Adding a new recipient as BCC is better than using either To or CC because neither the sender, nor the recipient will know about this change in the mailflow.

Configuring Xeams

Follow the steps below to configure Xeams.

  • Log in as admin
  • Click Filter Management/Score Configuration.
  • Specify a value for Outbound Learner. One example to use is something like learner@filter.mycompany.com. Very Important: notice the sub-domain filter.mycompany.com in the email address. This is necessary because services like Microsoft Exchange Online will never forward emails belonging to mycompany.com to Xeams unless you use a different domain.

Configuring MX Record

You will have to create a new MX record for the sub-domain used for the email address above. In this above example, we are using filter.mycompany.com. Here is a screenshot of a screen used by GoDaddy

Screenshot for configuring MX record in GoDaddy.

Every domain registrar have their own interface for creating MX records and therefore, the screen may look different.

Configuring Microsoft Exchange Online

Following steps demonstrate configuring Microsoft Exchange Online.

Note:

Although this example refers to Microsoft Exchange Online, the concept is similar with any other service provider.

Verifying Your Configuration

Emails sent to this address is only used to learn and improve inbound filtering. Therefore, you will not see the BCCed messages to learner@filter.mycompany.com in Xeams. Instead, a special log file called OutboundLearner.log exists, which will log an entry whenever a new email is received for this address.