Forum Discussion
MicrosoftFeature update: Email sending behavior for Groups in Outlook
Nicholas Williams - No, there is no effect to group subscription options with this change. Subscribed users will continue to receive all group conversations, messages and events in their inbox as usual.
The only effect of this change will be on the sender of the messages to groups as below.
Old behavior
I send a message to a group, or reply back to a message from a group. Message is delivered to the group and is available in the group's conversation archive. I would also receive my message in back my inbox.
Revised behavior
I send a message to a group, or reply back to a message from a group. Message is delivered to the group and is available in the group's conversation archive. I would NOT receive my message in back my inbox.
Would be great if you can help us understand why your users are complaining with this change? What additional benefit does it provide to users when they receive their sent email back again in their inbox? Is it just a confirmation that the message was delivered to the group?
Out of curiosity, why don't you continue to simply use DLs, if this is the right tool for you?
I will do that if it's an option, but I get a clear feeling that Microsoft is attempting to phase out DLs (upgrade button to O365 Groups in Exchange Admin Center), I could certainly be wrong about that. I don't have a problem with that if it's the case, just provide some backwards compatibility functionality for those who want it. Also, from what I've read you have to wait 24 hours to downgrade a O365 Group to Distribution List, does that result in any downtime for the inbox? If so, it's not an option, this is an extremely high priority and time-sensitive email. I know nobody internally upgraded these emails from DLs to Groups, so I assume it was either intentionally or accidentally automatically upgraded by Microsoft. There are other sporadic reports of this on the net, which seems to be another sign that DLs are being phased out.
Surely, Microsoft is pushing heavily toward the use of Groups, but nevertheless, I've not heard of any plans to eventually deprecate DLs.
AFAIK, there is no automatic upgrading of DLs to Groups. I am pretty sure that someone in your organization has pushed the button to upgrade, maybe without exactly knowing what they were doing.
IMHO, if you don't like the behavior of Groups wrt email, you should downgrade to DLs, but I don't know if this will bounce back emails in the meanwhile.
Salvatore,
Thanks for the feedback. I will look into a safe method of downgrading the Group to a DL, however, the possibility of bouncing emails will make this impossible if it is the only way. I'm not going to argue the automatic upgrade, it happened with two particular DLs, I would have a hard time believing that either myself or the other administrator did this (he knows/understands O365 groups and hates them even more than I do), but I can't say with 100% certainty.