Forum Discussion
Newbie Question about Shared Mailbox
Our office has been using SMTP/POP with user emails and generic emails that go to 5 users. Our hosted email is moving us to Microsoft 365 emails which for the past days I've been trying to understand.
Here is the situation, our users are not computer savvy and this transition will be a struggle. I would like to make it as painless as possible.
We are using Outlook 2019 desktop. So I understand that a new email account has to be made on Outlook 2019 for microsoft exchange email.
My question is, how best to deal with the generic email Email address removed that goes to 5 users. Since this is currently SMTP/POP, a copy of the emails go to the 5 users. On their desktop they can do whatever they want with their copy, delete, archive etc and it would not affect the mailbox on the server.
I've read about shared mailbox. If I set it up this way, these are my questions:
If a user deletes an email in the shared mailbox, will the other users still see it in their desktop inbox?
If a user files or archives the email, will it still show up on the other users desktop inbox?
If a user replies to the email with the other users see the sent email?
Sorry for being a newbie. Our "forced" transition is coming soon. I am of the mind to leave the generic email box as a user rather than a shared mailbox. What are your thoughts or suggestions? TIA.
- I don't believe there is an option in Outlook to create rules for a shared mailbox. We've always logged into OWA to open the mailbox and create the rules using that. And yes, once the rules are applied they work as they would for any other mailbox as rules are mailbox specific.
"Oh however, if for instance I open the message not intended for me, it will show it as read for all." - Yes, but...if it's not for you then just right-click on it and mark it as unread. Easy, peasy.
NewtoIT20221735 To answer your questions, the shared mailbox is a completely separate mailbox, with an email address, that is separate from their personal mailbox. Any changes made in the shared mailbox will be reflected for all users as it is the same for all users. If you want to maintain the same functionality where the users can do whatever they want with their copy of the email, then you might want to look at a distribution list which would send each individual their own copy of the email that they can do as they please. If you still decide to use the shared mailbox, you can delegate access to the shared mailbox to each of the users and they will see the mailbox attached to their copy of Outlook along with their personal inbox.
- ozziesedajr Thanks for your suggestion. I have looked at distribution list. The generic email Email address removed has a lot of email so adding this on top of the user's email might not be the best thing to do for productivity. The users are not computer savvy, they do not know how to create rules or categories etc.
- In our environment, we use a lot of shared mailboxes. One of the problems with them, especially when new employees are hired, is that users forget to check the mailbox, as crazy as that sounds, because it is a separate mailbox and you don't get notification that an email has arrived in the shared mailbox.
In your situation, I would set this up as follows:
1. Create the shared mailbox
2. Create the distribution list and assign it the generic email address
3. In the distribution list, add the users and the shared mailbox as members. This way everyone and the shared mailbox itself gets a copy of the email.
4. Whomever does not want to get copied directly to their inbox, remove them from the distribution list and they can check for emails in the shared mailbox attached to their outlook
When you move all of the email from the existing mail service, archive it in the shared mailbox.
Hope this helps!
