Forum Discussion
MicrosoftFeature update: Email sending behavior for Groups in Outlook
We have recently fixed the email sending behavior to a group, where senders had complained about receiving the emails they send to a group, back in their personal inbox. With this fix, senders will no longer receive the emails they send to a group, back in their personal inbox. The sender can receive email sent to group in there Inbox, they have to login to there mailbox using OWA, and then Settings->Mail->Groups->"Send me a copy of email I send to a group"
The primary complaints we heard were about reading the same message users sent to a group multiple times - in their sent messages, and their inbox.
We believe sending an email to a person or to a group should be consistent, and this circling back of an email from a group was just leading to confusion, unnecessary triage, and inconvenience for a lot of our users.
We understand that some users had started using this inconsistent behavior as a way to confirm if their emails were delivered to a group. An email sent to a group is already available in the group's conversation archive as well as in the sender's sent email.
Update (4/7/2017):
Thanks for all your valuable feedback. Though a good majority of our users have embraced this change for Groups, there's also a section of our users who complained about this change affecting their workflows. We value all the feedback from our users and hence we are considering enhancing this feature to address the negative feedback. Please watch this space for further updates on this feature in the coming weeks.
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?
108 Replies
At least in our company's case, O365 groups were considered an upgrade of simple distribution groups, with all the added features, something that we absolutely loved and therefore upgraded all distribution groups to O365 groups. So it would make sense for an upgraded distribution group to function/behave as its simple version does, but with the added benefit (as its supposed to be an upgrade) of being able to change this behaviour. Your argument about keeping sending to a person vs a group consistent I believe does not stand if you compare sending to a person, vs a distribution group the sender is a member of, vs an O365 group the sender is a member of. It is not consistent across the board there.
So please make this configurable as people are used to this way of this working as it did for ages now. It is clear and logical.
Also, please dont think you know whats best for how people work. When making such a change in your code that is not a fix to something that is broken, dont force it down to people's throats. Set it as default if that is what your telemetry tells you that people want, but also make it configurable so that people have a choice. Thank you for your hard work.
- Ravin Sachdeva
Dimitris, thanks for your feedback. I understand your inconvenience and apologize if this change does not help you be more productive. Rest assured, from the tens of millions of customers that we serve, we've received a bunch of positive feedback on this change and some negative feedback as well. I hope you understand that serving millions of customers and catering to each one of their needs is not the easiest things to do, but we're trying our best :)
You have provided very valid feedback and I assure you that we will consider it as we plan engineering work for the immidiate future. Please watch this space for more updates on this.
We were using Office Groups (and advertising them to users) as a direct replacement of distribution lists with extended capabilities. It was the only possibility to keep communication in desktop Outlook 2010 we still had on some PCs. For us it's not a confirmation of sending, but the message we can filter to a folder like a normal distribution list and reply to it. As we are upgrading from the last Office 2010 copies I try to convince users to the new Groups interface, but starting from "Microsoft broke something again" is not making my life easier.
In short - configuration option would be great. Getting this option FAST would be even better.
- Ravin SachdevaThanks for your feedback, Tomasz. I understand your concern.
While we evaluate making this option configurable to serve a use case like yours, CC'ing oneself on a message would be a quick workaround to continue using Groups as DLs. Do you think that option can work for you in the near term?My manager recently started using Outlook Groups, so I am no longer receiving messages that I send to the group email address in my inbox. I just looked under Outlook Options, Groups, and I do not see an option where I can check to receive emails that I send to a group address in my inbox. Will this functionality be added for those of us who do want to see our own messages in the inbox?
If the Office365 group is nested in a distribution list is the behavior the same? Seems inconsistent in what I have seen so far.
- Ravin Sachdeva
MichelleProper - can you help me understand the issue in detail - You're saying that you have a DL which has a Group as a member. When you send an email to that DL, you get that email back in your inbox? Is my understanding is correct?
We have not changed email sending behavior for DLs. If you send an email to a DL, you will receive this email back in your inbox. This behavior is only changed for Groups.
Yes, we have a DL that has an Office365 group as a member. One member of that Office 365 group sent an email to the DL yesterday and he didn't get a copy. I was curious if the new group functionality overrides the DL functionality and if someone wants a copy of the message they send to the DL they need to cc themselves.
Is there any way to reverse this change? I've got users who want the emails to keep coming to their own inbox
You can force the email to come back to the sender's inbox by just adding the sender name again in the To; field, like a "note to self".
I used to be able to pick groups that are made in my contacts to send emails to from the recent list. Since the latest update I cannot do this anymore. I have tried to select the group from my address book several times (and it does work this way, it is just slower). I thought that after a few times of sending emails to this same group the group would re-appear in my recent list to select for sending emails this has not happened. Is there anyway to fix this?
- Ravin Sachdeva
Hi 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!
I don't understand this upgrade - we have users complain that they don't get messages sent to groups in their inbox - so are we taking away the subscribe button too? I don't want to see this go away. Users want the group messages in their inbox.
- Ravin Sachdeva
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?
Hi, Is this still the case today?
One user claims thet few months ago, when she sent any email to an O365 Groups she belongs to, she also received it on her Inbox, but now it only goes to the Group Inbox. I also checked that under Group settings, "All Emails and Events" are selected.
We are using Outlook client and not OWA.
- This is the kind of communication I was expecting and that can be also found here: https://products.office.com/en-us/business/office-365-roadmap?featureid=76175
In general that will be nice to have the notification about such updates in Admin Message Center. Another recently introduced change is updating default mailbox size from 50MB to 100MB - also there was no notification (except appearing it in Roadmap Rolling Out section). Or i missed something?
Another point is "More info" in Roadmap sometimes forwards us on outdated articles.
Anyway, perhaps above is for separate discussion in another thread. As for this feature have nothing against it except no notification was sent.
- Ravin SachdevaThanks for your feedback.
The message center post for this change is live, ID - MC94667.
