Customize channel email address

[Scott Winn]

I almost forgot one of our biggest requests--the ability to set custom email addresses for each channel, preferably within our own domain.

Is this feature planned, and if so is there any timeframe avaiable at the moment?

[#2]

Unfortunately this is currently not supported Scott. Could you help me understand why you want to have a custom email address there?

[#3]

This is a request from one of our admins, and the randomly generated addresses are not very easy on the eyes.

Would it be possible to at least change the default format to include at least parts of the team and channel name?

I would prefer a long address that I can easily understand rather than a combination of random letters and numbers that don't really mean anything to me.

[#4]

And thanks for your response, by the way! I almost forgot my manners :)

[#5]

Someone else noted that because of the non-org domain of the address, emails into your Team wouldnt be processed by Exchange Online Advanced Threat Protection, if you had that enabled for your org.

[#6]

I'd look at adding an entry in the Global Address List for a channel email. Try the naming convention [Team].[Channel].
Then it doesn't matter what the address looks like. It will simply be an address to look up in the GAL.
However, any Team admin can remove the address and create another one. There is a good reason for removing an address, if it has been shared publicly and you need to stop email from being sent in. This would mean that the address needs to be updated dynamically to the GAL.
We probably need an advanced setting to add to GAL.

[#7]

I can see this being a valuable option.  Is it possible to at least specify the domain that the email address is created in?

BTW, I think this uservoice item may be what you are asking for - https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/18600937-when-emailing-channel...

[#8]

I've kicked up some internal conversations about this very concern. More to come on this front...

[#9]

Any traction on this topic?  I was just told I'm being a "crabby email guy" because I'm frustrated with the random addresses on channels.  We went through the process of making the team have a very nice consistent address and now have channels that have completely random addresses.  It would seem logical to me that this would be something where it could inherit the addressing policy from the team itself....

[#10]

I'm checking on this myself. Was less about the random addresses for us (although that is certainly not ideal) but more about the email flow.

I'll update if I can.

[#11]

The email flow is concerning as well since I have multiple systems that would now basically be sending this back out to the internet and back into O365.  I'm not super concerned about it but my users are being trained to look for things that resemble phishing attacks.  Addresses like this look like phishing addresses. Gotta love users! :)

[#12]

I'd like to see tighter integration with Office 365 on this.  When creating an email address for a channel on teams, the ideal email address format should be <teamname>.<channelname>@customerdomain.com.  This address should be in the global address list for hosted Exchange as well.

[#13]

This is still being looked at. Hoping to see some traction now that Ignite has come and gone, but nothing committed yet.

[#14]

I have come across this request today in our organization specially because of the domain name used in the email address and it totally make sense to have a team.channel as the email address instead of random ID. Please let us know if there is anything planned around this for the upcoming releases?

[#15]

I have come across this request today in our organization specially because of the domain name used in the email address and it totally make sense to have a team.channel as the email address instead of random ID. Please let us know if there is anything planned around this for the upcoming releases?

[#16]

I have come across this request today in our organization specially because of the domain name used in the email address and it totally make sense to have a team.channel as the email address instead of random ID. Please let us know if there is anything planned around this for the upcoming releases?

[#17]

Has there been any change to the timeline for being able to change channel email addresses ?

[#18]

Has there been any change in the timeline for the ability to change channel emails ?

Teams has been great to use so far but not being able to have easy to recognize emails has been a large barrier to switching people over to it.

[#19]

Hi,

Does anyone have any update on customizing channel email address.

Thanks,

[#20]

Hi

is there any update to this? RE: changing the teams channel email address?

What are the pro and cons if this is achievable?

Thanks

[#21]

Hi,

If its achievable I would rather have an email address which I can easily remember than a random one.

Also sharing an email address with a combination of random letters and numbers to other vendors doesn't look professional.

Thanks

[#22]

I just started testing this feature internally.  As far as I can tell, the team email address is just used inbound to post.  When replying to the post, the email does not respond back out to the original email.

Is there any reason anyone can think of, that we can not just use a forwarding rule in 365 to achieve the a custom email address.  For example setup an email address from salesteam@yourdomain.com to automatically forward to the automatic team address x32349u3.yourdomain@amer.team.ms?  I think this will work as a workaround to solve the issue of branding, remembering the address, and professionalism if you need to give this email out to a client.  

[#23]

we've the same problem/issue is there any news to use custom email address to MS Teams channel email?

[#24]

I just wanted to give an update as we discussed this again in our organization today.

@Deletedwas kind enough to offer a workaround until Microsoft provides this as a feature:

simply set up a mail contact with the external address in Exchange Admin Center and then add the custom email address to the contact.

Here is his post over in Tech Community.

Thanks @Deleted!

[#25]

Ideally every organization has its own DL for teams. When the organizations are moving to the teams, they need to use the existing DL in the channels, if they have one. And inbound or outbound emails should be triggered from Teams so all information is collated for collaboration.

[#26]

The work around doesn't work for O365 Exchange users as there isn't a section to set email alias's

[#27]

@Darya Valchonak 

Let em give a couple reasons:

1) Teams and Groups don't support folders in the mailboxes - limiting our ability to organize messages and actions for follow up etc, Channels seems to be the preferred method for this.

2) There are often "subteams" within our groups, which the team at large may need to be peripherally aware of, the channel makes sense to carve out a subgroup that the group at large can still look at.

Example : Contracts Team - channel for Incoming contracts, pending approval, sent for signature, submitted... all of these are managed with folders today, and with Flow and PowerApps we can help manage that, however being able to directly access/send to a channel would be very helpful for external management on those processes.

There are many reasons across many organizations to want to manage the channel email address directly, and honestly, it's a real easy fix (add the alias capability directly on the channel, the same as it exists for the team/group itself).

While we're fixing it, the Teams/O365 groups as well as the channels need a page for managing these aliases -- doing it through powershell works, but it's cumbersome.

[#28]

Hi Scott

Just looking at this and wondering did this ever get anywhere, the contacts is fine but I want external to be able to post in and that doesn't work. <Team name> - <channel name> @ <domain name> seems so user friendly and logical?

Teams has the ability to get rid of all the clutter of random dist / 365 groups by aligning under the team and then the channel. It seems such a good idea to move forward like this but maybe I am missing something?

I appreciate the interaction between exchange and when using powershell having to use Exchange to alter the Team email address, can the channel be exposed in the same way maybe? Appreciate the random numbers is probably just an internal pointer but it must be able to be exposed somehow as you can retrieve the address from within the application.

It would be such an improvement from an administrative level, or am I just the only admin who thinks this?

Cheers
Dan

[#29]

---

Just looking at this and wondering did this ever get anywhere, the contacts is fine but I want external to be able to post in and that doesn't work. 

---

@danensor, why do you think it doesn't work?

You can set the primary address of the contact to "SMTP:channel_team@yourdomain.com" and the secondary one to original "smtp:12345678.yoiurdomain.com@emea.teams.ms"

using "Set-MailContact" PowerShell commandlet.

After that any external will be able to send to channel_team@yourdomain.com

The bad thing is you can't retrieve the channel address using PowerShell.

[#30]

@Victor Ivanidze @danensor 

You guys are right on the head... just because you can backdoor/work around something to make it work, doesn't mean it's the way it should be.

Having to jump through all these hoops to make a custom channel work the way we prefer, and then not having any good way to indicate what it is, is very frustrating.

I think there's good call here for this feature to be part of the management web interface, not just added as a powershell back door.

And realistically, it's not just the channel, it's teams and groups -- there needs to be a clean GUI interface for adding and listing smtp aliases.

[#31]

Since Teams email addresses are visible in the Exchange GAL its really important to be able to differentiate them as TEAM email addresses.   There should be a template capability say All team email addresses are prefixed by some like "TC - Team Email address name <xyz.onmicrosoft.com."   Currently even though these email addresses display in the GAL there is no way to search for a Team email address or an easy way to identify a GAL entry as a team.   This creates uncontrollable bloat.

[#32]

@usga_jdm 

we are going to release a tool that will create/update the "TeamChannels" address list and contacts based on existing mail-enabled team channels.

I'll place here a link soon.

[#33]

As promised...

ChannelAddress tool allows an Office 365 admin to create as many mail contacts as many mail-enabled channels exist in organization. Each mail contact has an external email address of team channel and additional custom branded email address (<TC_{ChannelName}_{TeamName}@{yourdomain}>).

Also ChannelAddress can create a custom address list "Team Channels" that contains all these contacts. You can rename it if you wish.

Please test this demo.

[#34]

@Victor Ivanidze 

Thank you for creating this tool.  I am going to give it a try.

Here is my example of why I want to control the email addresses of channels:

I want to create a Team for each of my customers, but I want the customer to be able to access different emails for different aspects of the business.  But I want all of those in channels in a single team...  also notice that I may or may not want teams on the domain side of the email address.

Main team "customer" - customer@teams.contoso.com

sales.customer@contoso.com

orders.customer@contoso.com

helpdesk.customer@contso.com

alerts.customer@contoso.com

project1.customer@teams.contoso.com

[#35]

I'm not sure if this has been answered. I believe I have a workaround here (it works fro me)...

In the 365 admin centre: create 2 contacts;

'Channel Contact' with the channel email address; and

'External Contact' with your external email address; then

In the Exchange admin center:

Create a rule that forwards email from the External Contact to the Channel Contact.

[#36]

@adblake , in fact you don't need to use 2 contacts. A single contact with 2 SMTP addresses is quite enough.