Forum Discussion
Setting up a group email account with different permissions
Use a shared mailbox and grant Read permissions to the Inbox/Sent Items folders to the corresponding people. The secretary will need Send As/Send on behalf of permissions, and you can grant her Full access permissions in case she needs to move/delete/organize messages.
Creating an "Office 365 Group" is also an option, but you cannot restrict it to only "read" access, thus it might not be a suitable solution if you want to prevent users from accidentally deleting messages.
But be aware that, in order to follow Vasil's advice, you should first create an individual full account for each of the users...
I understand that I need to set up individual accounts in the admin centre, but is it possible, if I set up a shared mailbox, for the users to access the shared mailbox directly without linking outlook to their individual accounts?
I want to keep the experience as "clean" as possible, and users already have their own personal accounts outside office 365. I don't want their outlook applications to be "cluttered" with redundant accounts which are not used.Perhaps another option could be to use a Distribution Group (AKA Distribution List).
You could add to it the secretary and the recipients (the latter as Mail Contacts, i.e. using their existing personal addresses) and assign to the secretary the SendAs right, instructing her to put in CC the DL when she sends an email or a reply.
Just an idea...
They can always access the Shared mailbox (or just its Sent Items folder) on demand, but the process is rather tedious if you ask me, so adding it in Outlook might be a better option. Alternatively, they can just use OWA to interact with the shared mailbox.
