Changing reply-to semantics of a group

[Tomek Piatek]

Is there a way to change the default reply-to address when communicating through Office 365 Group?

Currently the reply-to address default to the address of the original sender. I would like to make it default to the address of the group with the original sender appearing in the CC field.

Consider this scenario:

We have a group configured so that 3rd parties, from outside of the organisation, are allowed to send messages to the group. When we want to send a message to the group and the 3rd party we compose it as usual in Outlook and add the 3rd party email address to the to or cc fields.

When the 3rd party receives the message they must use "reply all" function of their mail client in order to not break the chain of communication with the group. If they simply hit reply, which is the most likely thing to happen, the reply will be sent to the original poster only. The group will be bypassed! 

This behaviour severely limits the utility of groups. It would be nice if this behaviour was configurable so that we could set the reply-to address to default to the address of the group and not of the original sender.

I'm looking forward to hearing your views on this.

[#2]

I understand that I can achieve this functionality by following the instructions in https://support.office.com/en-us/article/allow-members-to-send-as-or-send-on-behalf-of-an-office-365...

However, this process is very onerous. It simply shifts the onus of performing the correct actions form the 3rd party recipient to the original poster. Also, each new group member needs to be given the right to post as group. That's a lot of work for the users and the admins.

I'd like a way to permanently set this behaviour for the whole group.

[#3]

It's no different than sending messages to a "regular" DG, if you want to include all the DG members you need to make sure that the DG address is added, which usually translates to pressing the Reply All button. But no, there is no functionality to configure the reply-to address in Groups.

[#4]

Hi Tomek,

if you are using Outlook 2013/2016 (not OWA) you can try to set the From address as default using a third-party add-in for Outlook. Google for SetFrom utility, for example.

Regards,
Victor Ivanidze