Email settings

SmarteBuild sends orders, tender invitations, variations and claims by email. For those to arrive — and to look like they came from you — sending has to be set up.

The settings

Per user, on their account or profile:

Field	What it is
Email address	The address mail is sent from
Email password	The password for that mailbox
SMTP host	Your mail server
SMTP port	Its port
SSL Required	Whether the connection is encrypted
Set as default sending method	Use this for everything this user sends

Test and Save on the profile checks the settings before storing them. Use it — an untested setting fails silently at the moment you send a tender.

Getting the values

They come from whoever runs your email. Common ones:

Provider	Host	Port	SSL
Microsoft 365	smtp.office365.com	587	Yes
Google Workspace	smtp.gmail.com	587	Yes
Most hosts	mail.yourdomain.com.au	587 or 465	Yes

Modern mail providers usually need an app password

Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace generally block plain password sign-in from third-party applications. You will need an app password generated in the mail account’s security settings, not your normal login password. If Test and Save fails with a correct-looking password, this is almost always why.

For Office 365 there is also a direct connection under Integrations in the top bar, which avoids SMTP entirely. See Office 365 and Outlook.

Why per user

So mail comes from the person sending it.

An order from dave@yourbuilding.com.au gets a reply to Dave. One from a generic company address gets a reply into a shared mailbox, where it competes with everything else.

It also means the sent mail is in that person’s own mailbox if they need it later.

When mail does not arrive

Work through in this order:

1. Run Test and Save. If it fails, it is the settings, and the error usually says which part.
2. Check for an app password, per the caution above.
3. Check the recipient address — a typo in a supplier contact is the most common cause of all.
4. Ask the recipient to check spam. Mail from a new sender often lands there first.
5. Check your mail provider’s sending limits. Sending twenty tender invitations at once can trip a rate limit.

SPF and DKIM

If mail sends successfully but consistently lands in recipients’ spam folders, your domain’s SPF and DKIM records probably need updating to authorise sending.

That is a job for whoever manages your DNS, and it is worth doing once. Tender invitations that land in spam are lost bids, and you never find out.

BCC yourself

Worth a habit on anything that matters. It gives you a timestamped copy in your own mail system, outside SmarteBuild, which is occasionally exactly what settles a question about whether something was sent.