Forum Discussion

Joshua Widup's avatar
Joshua Widup
Brass Contributor
Jan 24, 2017

Phantom Office 365 Mailboxes

Hey everybody - quick overview of what's going on...   Hybrid On-Prem with Office 365.  We have mail users (ie: contacts) in the system that do not have mailboxes on-prem or in Office 365.  They ha...
exchange
office 365
TonyRedmond's avatar
TonyRedmond
MVP
Jan 26, 2017

I think what happens is that the creation of the group kicks off the provisioning process to make sure that all group resources are available. Some group members might have EXO licenses, some might not. In your case, you accessed the group mailbox with a user that is not licensed to use EXO, so the attempt to send mail was rejected by the transport system because of your unlicensed status. The group mailbox and its assigned email address are perfectly valid and are required to serve people with EXO licenses...

VegardStromsoy's avatar
VegardStromsoy
Brass Contributor
Jan 26, 2017
That is indeed the case. There is no problem for EXO users in this scenario, but it is not an acceptable outcome for SP1 users to have a default link on a team site that automatically logs them into what appears to them to be a normal Outlook mail account (from which you can send mail but not receive). Ideally the link to the group conversation should be removed for unlicensed users in my opinion, or at least display some meaningful error message.
  • TonyRedmond's avatar
    TonyRedmond
    MVP
    Jan 26, 2017

    100% agree that the error handling and messages are not what they should be in this case.

    • Joshua Widup's avatar
      Joshua Widup
      Brass Contributor
      Jan 26, 2017

      I'm sure I'll find out more from support today but you guys are uncovering what I was suspicious of originally.  It would seem that this is possibly some byproduct of another requirement within the service to have a "mailbox" as an anchor. 

      • Joshua Widup's avatar
        Joshua Widup
        Brass Contributor
        Jan 27, 2017

        Word from support is "known issue" but they can't give me any timelines or details as to when this will be remedied.  Just something that everybody should be aware of if they're dealing with "mail user" objects.