Forum Discussion
Organizing Multiple Shared Inbox's
Multiple people in Multiple shared inboxes within the organization. How do you keep them organized, what works, what doesn't work?
We have color coding/tags that mean certain things for different inboxes which doesn't work when it is one person working out of multiple inboxes.
For Example: Joe is in three shared inboxes, but each inbox has the color red tagged for different things. Joe can't save red as multiple things.
Also, do people tag who is working on what and then move to their personal inboxes, or leave them in the original inbox until it is resolved and then move to a completed folder.
2 Replies
In my experience, once a team needs ownership, status tracking, prioritization, routing, escalation, and completion visibility, a shared mailbox (plus a few distribution lists for good measure) becomes very difficult to keep under control.
The best approach, naturally, depends on the environment, the process, which tools are available, and the overall willingness of the teams to try something different. Sometimes, the solution has to be quick as well. Sometimes teams cannot integrate third-party tools.
So I usually sit down with teams who are looking for something more sustainable and map out what they are actually trying to achieve. In most cases, we end up moving away from shared mailboxes entirely in favor of Microsoft 365 Groups. But if the organization still needs to maintain a shared mailbox, we at least separate intake from execution and define a clear working model:
Shared mailbox receives the request → Power Automate creates or routes the work item → Work is managed in a structured Microsoft 365 tool
From there, the choice of tool depends on the nature of the work:
- Microsoft Lists is often the best first step. It provides a shared queue with structured fields, consistent ownership, status tracking, views, history, and basic reporting. It is especially effective for teams transitioning out of “email-as-a-system.” It also feels more natural to anyone who likes to track things in spreadsheets.
- Planner works well when the work is task-based, with clear assignments, due dates, and visible progress tracking across a team.
- Loop is also a good third step if you have it available.
The key design consideration is also where the tool will live. A List or Planner board that sits inside a personal account is a future incident waiting to happen. So I typically ensure there is a proper SharePoint site or Microsoft 365 Group backing the solution, even for teams that are not ready to fully adopt Groups yet.
This is a common problem when working within a shared mailbox. I had the hardest time working out of shared inboxes for so long when I used them at my last job. My coworkers and I were constantly replying to the same emails, having trouble allocating work within the shared inbox, organizing and tagging emails based on content, and more. We had so much trouble with this for so long and we just thought this is how working within a shared mailbox was. We had looked into options such as using outlooks rules but they were quite limited. We wanted something like a help desk software but that would have been a huge change. We settled on finding a layering software to integrate with outlook so we didn't have to change our whole email management platform. We settled on a software called Emailgistics after searching for multiple options like Freshdesk and others. It allowed us to do all the things we wanted to do and more with ease. I thought the shared mailbox process would just be terrible the whole time we used it but I am so glad we found a viable solution.
