If your students use Outlook, you may hear that emails from your uConnect platform are showing up in the "Other" tab instead of the "Focused" tab. The good news: this means your emails are being delivered successfully and passing all of Outlook's security checks. They're just being sorted into a less visible spot. Below, we explain why this happens and walk through the options for making sure your messages land front and center.
Why This Happens
Outlook uses two separate systems to handle incoming mail:
- Spam filtering decides whether a message gets delivered at all. This is what allowlisting (safelisting) affects, and it's typically handled when your IT team completes DNS and email setup during onboarding.
- Focused Inbox sorts mail that has already been delivered into the Focused or Other tab. This sorting is based on how each individual recipient has interacted with a sender in the past.
Because Focused Inbox is personalized, a message can be fully trusted and allowlisted and still land in Other simply because a student has never opened an email from your career center before. Allowlisting your sending address won't change this behavior.
💡 Good to know: If your emails were failing authentication, they would be rejected or sent to junk rather than sorted into Other. Mail that lands in Other has passed every check on its way in.
Option 1: Ask Your IT Team to Add a Mail Flow Rule (Recommended)
This is the only admin-side setting that moves mail into Focused for all students at once, and it's Microsoft's own documented method. We recommend forwarding this section to your IT team.
Steps for your Microsoft Exchange admin:
- Open the Exchange admin center and go to Mail flow → Rules.
- Add a new rule.
- Under Apply this rule if, set the condition so the sender address (or sending domain) matches your career center's uConnect "From" address.
- Under Do the following, choose Modify the message properties → Set a message header.
- Set the header and value exactly as follows:
- Header:
X-MS-Exchange-Organization-BypassFocusedInbox - Value:
true
- Header:
- Save the rule.
⚠️ Important: Both the header name and value are case-sensitive, so they must be entered exactly as shown.
Not sure what your "From" address is? Reach out to our Support Team and we'll confirm it for you. You can see what the "Email From Name" and "Reply to:" fields are set to under Engage>Emails>Custom Emails and often, these are the same as your "From" email address.
Option 2: Students Can Update Their Own Settings
Students can also adjust this themselves. It works well for individuals, but since it's one person at a time, it's best as a supplement to the mail flow rule rather than a replacement.
- Always move to Focused: Right-click a uConnect email in the Other tab and select Always move to Focused (in some Outlook versions, this appears under Move).
- Turn off Focused Inbox: In Outlook settings, students can turn off Focused Inbox entirely so all mail appears in a single inbox.
💡 Tip: Consider adding a quick note to your student onboarding materials or first-semester emails encouraging students to move your career center emails to Focused.
Still Seeing Issues?
If your IT team has added the mail flow rule and emails are still landing in Other, submit a ticket with our Support Team and we'll be happy to take a closer look.
Please visit our Knowledge Base to find self-service guides on our product and open a ticket with our Support Team. If you haven't already, join our uConnect Community to chat with other uConnect super users and find our upcoming events!