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

Each person sets up their own, under Email sending on their profile. There are three ways:

Way	What it needs
Outlook or Microsoft 365 (recommended)	Sign in with Microsoft once. No password is stored.
Gmail or Google Workspace	Sign in with Google once.
Another provider	The email address, mailbox password, outgoing mail server and port

For Outlook and Gmail, a small window opens on Microsoft’s or Google’s own sign-in. You pick the account to send from there - there is no address to type - and the window closes by itself once a test message has gone through. The connection then renews itself.

For Another provider, Test and save sends a real test message before storing anything. If the test fails, nothing is saved and the page says why. Send a test checks a saved mailbox again at any time, and the profile shows whether the last send worked.

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

Microsoft 365 and Gmail: sign in instead of typing a password

Microsoft is switching password sending off, and Google refuses your normal Gmail password from other programs. Use Outlook or Microsoft 365 or Gmail or Google Workspace on your profile instead - you sign in once and no password is stored. If you must use a password with Gmail, it has to be an App Password made in your Google account’s security settings.

See also Office 365 and Outlook and Google.

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. Click Send a test on your profile. If it fails, it is the settings, and the message says which part and what to do.
2. Microsoft 365 or Gmail? Switch to signing in, 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.