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?
MicrosoftMeanwhile, can you help us understand what is the exact workflow which your users need this ability for? Thanks!
The use case is the very typical use case of every email user for the last twenty years or longer.
You define a group. In that group is user a@foo.com b@foo.com and c@foo.com
User a@foo.com sends an email to the group. User a@foo.com expects, since their email is in the group, to recieve the email they just sent to the group. Again - as has always happened for many decades. Why is this difficult to understand and why does it cause consternation among Microsoft developers?
- Ravin Sachdeva
Thanks for the explanation, Matt Verner.
I partially understand the need, and I would like to clarify that this change was deliberate from Microsoft. It was difficult with distribution lists to track the mesaages sent to a DL, but with Groups, we have made that very easy by visiting the Group and looking at the conversations list. Any message sent to the Group will be available instantly to view in the group's conversation archive. This obviates the need of a bounce-back email to the sender if the purpose is purely to confirm whether the mail was delivered to the group.
Please do let us know if you are using the bounce-back email for triggering some workflows in your org, or is it just a means to confirm delivery?
Does it matter why is Matt Verner asking for that functionality back? He and his users (as well as the rest of us) had it before and were "robbed" of it, just because. Again, make this behaviour CONFIGURABLE, this is the secret to keeping not just the majority but ALL of your clients happy, unless you like these confrontations for some reason.
- I understand it was deliberate. Being a SW Engineer myself since 1981, I have seen untold number of "deliberate" decisions that were wrong or really, really disliked by large numbers of users. Based on the huge number of folks who liked and were comforted and have built up habits around a certain behavior, why is Microsoft having trouble admitting that this is wrong, really really disliked by large numbers of users?
This is simply exactly backwards behavior from the vast experience of ALL users for group email for decades. Sure, of course, you will have plenty of folks who are perfectly OK with this behavior. Adaptable, light footed users who just go with the flow. then you will have huge numbers of users who like things they way they have always worked and see zero reason that Microsoft changed fundamental behaviors of familiar tools "just because" and "you simply need to click here and then do this and you will see you sent it" when they used to do NOTHING and they saw it was sent and had immediate confirmation that what they intended indeed happened.
By the way, I am through trying to explain or do the job of your team. You guys need to get a usability clue and listen to your users. This is the last time I am responding in this thread.
