SOLVED

Feature update: Email sending behavior for Groups in Outlook

Microsoft

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.

107 Replies

Is the recommendation the same for Office365 groups nested within the DLs? Were you able to confirm that the feature that doesn't cc the sender on an email to an Office365 group won't cc members of the Office365 group inside the DL and they need to cc themselves if they want the email?

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.

Michelle, I'm not too sure I understand your exact question.

As a rule of thumb - mails sent to a DL will come back to the sender's inbox. Mails sent to a group will NOT get back to the sender's inbox. Nesting should not effect that, and the email sending behavior depends on what entity is in the TO: line. If you see it otherwise, please report the discrepancy here. Thanks.

Does that clarify your doubt?

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.

Sorry it doesn't. I see the behavior for the DLs and Groups as you have explained but when my co-worker sent an email to a DL that had an Office 365 group as a member he did not receive a copy of the email so it seems that the new feature will not copy the sender even if it is inside a DL. The DL (with the O365 group as one of the members) was the TO address for the email. I just wanted to confirm that is the expected behavior and not a bug or unintended consequence.

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.

We began researching changes when our documents shared to a group no longer showed in the group conversation or any of the member's of that group's emails.  It now only goes to the group's files.  Everyone in the group is subscribed so they are alerted when changes are made to the group.  They are no longer alerted.  We can get it to show up if we attach a document and email the group, but not if it is shared directly with the group.  It makes it confusing as to what will and what will not work.  On another note, I liked receiving my own emails with the rest of the group.

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.

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.  

No. This affects only Groups sending behavior and not traditional distribution lists.

When you send an email to a traditional distribution list, you will receive that email back in your inbox.

Hope that clarifies.

Sending to a group should still go to all of the group, regardless of whether it's a traditional distribution list or not.

Sending an email to a group or a DL will surely deliver that email to all the members. The only difference being that a sending to a group the sender does not receive it back in their inbox, while sending to a DL the sender gets that email back in inbox.

The behavior we are experiencing is if the O365 group is nested in the DL, the sender will not recieve the message either. In order for the sender to get the message they must be listed individually in the DL or cc themselves on the message.

Michelle, the case you mention seems to be like the sender is only the member of the child O365 group and the not the parent DL. If this is indeed the case, you're correct, the sender will not receive that sent email back in the inbox.

Let's assume the sender is a part of the parent DL instead, and the DL also has a nested group. In that case, the sender should receive the email back from the DL. Are you saying that this is not working?

The sender is not a part of the DL individually but a member of the group nested in the DL. It seemed easier to add the group instead of everyone one by one but sounds like we should add them one by one since the group behavior is different than the DL. Thank you for confirming.

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

Hi Philippa, apologies for the inconvenience caused to you because of this change. A notification about this change was sent to your organization's IT administrator with the ID - MC94667.

Any email that is sent to an O365 Groups inside Outlook is available to view instantly in the conversations list of the group and your sent email. You or your students can navigate to the group from your Outlook left navigation pane and find that email under the 'Conversations' list. Needless to mention, any message found in this list inside the group can only be deleted by an owner of the group and no one else. This should ensure that there is no uncertainty about a message sent to a group. You should be able to tell your students "the email is a part of the group's conversation list, so you must have received it in your inbox!" :)

Rest assured, if there is any delivery issue with any email sent from Outlook, you shall receive an 'Undeliverable..' message error in your inbox. So, you'll always know if an email was undelivered to a recipient.

The behavior of receiving one's own sent email to a group back in the inbox was unnecessary and an annoyance to most of our users. That said, we are currently working on enhancing this feature, which will give a user more control over email sent to a O365 group.

Hello.

 

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

 

Thank you.

 

Craig.

This change should be deployed world wide by now. Can you provide more details of the behavior that you notice? We can help debug why you are not seeing the change in behavior yet.
Hi ,
We are still facing the same issue ..If we reply on group or DLs , we also getting that in our inbox .
So Is that something we have to do on our end ?