Feature update: Email sending behavior for Groups in Outlook

Please make this settable into Admin center or via powershell.. Our users are not looking in the groups mailboxes.

Look, I love Office365, it's a wonderful platform.  But this small change is really putting a damper on my experience with email.  I wouldn't mind the change, if Office365 hadn't for some reason automatically upgraded some of my distribution lists to Office 365 groups.  Now a workflow that we've been used to for a decade now has changed.  Sometimes change has to be forced on users for good reasons, I do not believe this change has a good reason behind it.  I understand I can see the email I sent to the group in the shared mailbox, I do not want a shared mailbox, I do not want conversations.  I want emails to be emails.  Please add a configuration switch for this!!

The whole thrust of this argument seems to be about making Group messages behave more like Shared Mailboxes than Distribution Lists. Mail sent to a shared mailbox does not end up in the senders inbox (unless CC'd); mail sent to a DL does.

Microsoft have got groups all wrong. They should be an enhancement to Shared Mailboxes, not a replacement for DLs. Shared mailboxes centralise messages and anyone with access can see the whole mail history, both received and sent (if Outlook is setup properly).

We've always encouraged clients to use shared mailboxes rather than DLs for group addresses (see what I did there!). Much more sensible for clients to receive the mail once and see when it has been read and responses to it. Behind a Group is a shared mailbox, just most of it hidden. That makes no sense. Groups should expose the whole shared mailbox as normal. Then there'd be no need for group messages to behave differently in Outlook. If people want "conversations" (i.e. something more like IM), they can use SharePoint or Yammer.

Adding shared files and notes to what was a basic shared mailbox makes a whole lot more sense than messing about with DLs, which by their very nature are extremely simple constructs designed for one purpose - to send mails to multiple recipients.

As it stands, groups may have a use for internal communications on a particular subject, but they're no good for external communications where the full functionality of the shared mailbox is needed.

I urge Microsoft to consider Groups an enhancement to Shared Mailboxes, not DLs. Essentially that means you just need to back-out the changes made for Groups in Outlook and instead expose the full shared mailbox as normal. That then makes Groups a great tool to use for both internal and external communications and collaboration, with very easy management by end-users through Outlook.

I have several groups set up in "People".  When I try to send to a group from the email screen, the Group Name does not come up as a choice.  It is unrecognized, even if I type the full name exactly correct.  

Is there a fix for this?

Any news on the ability to configure Office 365 groups so that the sender receives the email?  I have users that really, really want that ability.

Hello,

Still not fixed. We've been testing the behavior of the Group Conversations, and still any message within a conversation goes to the Group but also the the personal Inbox of any of the gorup members. When I hit the "message" button, the Recipients automatically include both the group email and also each group member email address. 

The groups we tested are all created without the option of subscribing new members. We've tried Subscribe (afterwards) and Unsubscribe, but there is not difference. Each message in the group conversation goes to he personal Inboxes as well.

We have recently started working with Office 365, and this group conversation feature seemed very useful and attractive, but now it is simply annoyong the way it behaves.

Is there any solution forseen for this?

Thank you.

Hello.

Is this change world wide yet? I have some tenants where the change has not taken place.

Thank you.

Craig.

As a teacher I set up each one of my class sets as a group.  I do not like this change as when I used to send a message to a group the email that was sent to my inbox was a quick way to know that a email notification has been sent to each student in the group.  Now, I am uncertain if they have recieved a notification, not handy for me but a good get out clause for the students.  I can no longer say 'I got the email so you must have as well!'

On another note, I have spent quite a few hours trying to findout what had been changed when I noticed, last week, that group email notifications were not being sent back to me as the sender.  I did not find any notice about this change and only came across this thread today.

Please confirm, will all members of the group, excluding the sender, recieve an email to alert them to a new/reply to a conversation.  And is there a way to reverse the change for the reasons stated above.

Philippa

Does this apply to traditional distribution lists as well?  I am still seeing the behavior when I email a distribution list I am a member of I also receive the email in my inbox.  

This is a major change that our users were not expecting at. As a group collaborating together they were using the O365 groups in a certain way and working primarily out of their Inbox and all of a sudden they found that they are not receiving copies for the emails and have to communicate back and force between Inbox,, Sent Items.

At least 10 complaints so far from our users.