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?
Is there any way to reverse this change? I've got users who want the emails to keep coming to their own inbox
MicrosoftHi Joe Savage - Would be great if you can help us understand why you'd like to reverse 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?
We believe that sending messages to a group of people should behave the same way as sending messages to individuals. This change is made to achieve parity in email sending behavior to a person or to a group. When I send an email to a person, I do not receive that email back in my inbox. So why would i expect otherwise if I send that message to a group?
- The users Grover to scroll down and check the group boxes. Getting the conversation in their inbox ensures they see it and respond. The admin MUST have the option to create a group and have the conversations delivered to inboxes without each person having to subscribe!
HiRavin Sachdeva , I see Joe has replied with one reason - confirmation that it's gone. This is not just paranoia on our part - we are a peripatetic organisation who have connectivity via any combination of Wifi, REALLY bad WiFi over a satellite with much slowness and latency, tethering via a mobile on a roaming connection while on a ship some miles away from land or a piece of wet string. So it's not always obvious when the connection is up.
However one of the major things that has been broken is the finding of reference information. I can find information sent by someone else, regardless of whether it was sent to me or to one of the many groups I'm part of. Unless I send it.
If it's not made a option to be able to receive eMails sent to a group I'm part of by me, I'll probably add a rule to bcc myself on everything.
Ravin Sachdeva- Sending email to a group is more like sending email to a DL than to an individual since all members of the group receive a copy (except for the sender). With DLs it never worked like "you're the sender, so you don't receive a copy of your own message", so it really makes no sense to the average person that sending email to a group behaves differently.
If you look at it from the technical side in that you're sending to an individual recipient (the group mailbox) and the group members determine by following the group whether to receive a copy or not, you're right, of course, but in our experience the average Outlook user doesn't think that way. For them, a group is like a DL, so they expect the same behavior.
I provided more detail of the impact of this change and what behavior we'd like to see with groups here:
If I send an email to a group, it should go to everyone in the group. That's what groups are for. If I am a member of that group, I should get it as well. If I don't want to send something to everyone in the group, I won't send it to the group. This change makes no sense at all.
Yes, they would like to receive it as a confirmation it was delivered. I understand why this might be seen as unnecessary, but I still deal with a lot of users who frequently CC/BCC themselves on all emails as well which is similar. It's a bit redundant, but if it makes them more comfortable/ confident their message was received, I don't have a problem with it.
I agree that the new behavior makes sense for most people and should be the default, but I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that we be given the option to return to the previous behaviour if that's what is preferred by the user, especially since that's the way it's been configured for a while now.
- Ravin SachdevaThanks for your feedback. We will evaluate making this option configurable.
Please make this configurable asap. This is a big issue for us. You announced this as a replacement for distribution lists but it is not. We manage several O365 installations and our customers are not happy.
