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Enable Task Order Management for Outlook (Microsoft 365)

Automatically capture emailed task orders and create opportunities in NextStage.

Written by Bianca Fiore
Updated over a month ago

NextStage’s Email Task Order Management system allows you to automatically convert task order notifications received via email into searchable opportunities in your NextStage pipeline.

By configuring email forwarding rules in Microsoft 365, task order notifications from sources like eBuy, SeaPort, CIO-SP3, OASIS, and others can be automatically ingested into NextStage.

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Summary of Steps:

1. Verify your email's domain

2. Enable Automatic External Forwarding in Microsoft 365 Defender

3. Enable Forwarding to External Domains in the Exchange Admin Center

4. Create forwarding rules for applicable task order sources

Prerequisites: Have the ability to modify "Anti-spam policies” and manage "Remote Domains" in the Exchange Admin Center

1. Verify your email's domain:

NextStage requires DKIM verification to verify that task order emails are from a trusted mail server and domain. You can add these domains through Admin > DKIM Domains.

Domains to add to DKIM:

  • yourdomain.xxx

  • yourdomain.onmicrosoft.com

  • alexandria.nextstage.ai

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2. Enable Automatic External Forwarding in Microsoft 365 Defender

  • Follow this link and log in to your Microsoft account.

  • Click on the Anti-spam outbound policy (Default) and scroll to click the Edit protection settings link at the bottom of the sidebar.

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  • Under Forwarding Rules > Automatic Forwarding Rules. Choose: On - Forwarding is enabled.

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  • Save your settings

3. Enable Forwarding to External Domains in the Exchange Admin Center

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  • Add two new remote domains with the name: NextStage and NextStage Alexandria the Remote domains: nextstage.ai and alexandria.nextstage.ai

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  • Complete the rest of the wizard as shown in the screenshots:

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WARNING: Make sure to choose "Never" on the "Use rich-text format" setting.

4. Set up forwarding rules

Next, we'll create rules to forward emails to their corresponding NextStage Task Order endpoint.

You can find the email addresses for your workspace by clicking "Settings"

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In Outlook Web, click on the settings menu.

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Click “Rules”, from here you can create rules for any endpoint in the sources dropdown under task orders. If you have other emailed task orders like SLED opportunities that you receive through email your CSM can add endpoint for to the task order dropdown for you to configure email task order forwarding to

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If you're setting this up for the first time, click on "Add new rule". We recommend the following settings to start. You can tweak the conditions to account for any differences in how you receive task order notifications.

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Seaport

  • Name: Seaport NextStage Task Order Forwarding Rule

  • Condition(s):

  • Subject includes: Seaport

  • Action(s):

  • Forward to: the corresponding Seaport email in NextStage

NextStage only processes forwarded task order emails.


Need Help?

Contact:

hello@nextstage.ai or message us via Intercom.

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