Is there a "Sent" folder for an O365 Group Conversation?

[Brent Ellis]

If I grant a user access to SendAs the O365 Group, and they send an email "as the group", and they don't copy themself, where does that email actually go.

I can't find any record of it anywhere inside the group (only in the inbox of the recipient).

[#2]

The Sent folder is hidden and AFAIK you can't access it in any way.

To a Group is actually connected a shared mailbox behind the scenes, but you can't access most of its features.

Hence the overall behavior is similar instead to a DL, with obviously the exception of the conversation space (which behind the scenes is actually the shared mailbox inbox).

[#3]

Would be nice to eventually get a back-door, at a minimum for admins/owners. Maybe enable a few more features like folders, rules, and flags. Playing with replacing a few shared mailboxes at the moment, its so close to making sense for many, but not quite there yet.

[#4]

I don't think that at the moment Groups can be used to replace shared mailboxes: they lack really most of the needed features.

In fact Microsoft is touting them as a replacement for DLs and not for SMs, AFAIK.

[#5]

Agree, but there doesnt appear to be a good reason for why they COULDNT or WONT, by simply adding one or two features.

DLs in my opinion were never what needed to be replaced.

[#6]

It's simply what the team has decided, and to be honest I havent heard a single good argument around this. I've given the example with Junk email numerous times, the Sent items is another valid reason why people would actually want access to folders. So is subfolders.

Just avoid using groups as replacement for shared mailbox, there are numerous limitations to such scenario.

[#7]

Brent can you please explain the use case?

[#8]

Interested to know what is being planned around this too...as commented above, Groups are very far for being a replacement of shared mailboxes in regards of the features provided

[#9]

I agree that access to the "sent" folder would be appreciated. If we were to replace shared mailboxes (with send as permissions) with O365 groups, we would of course need access to the sent folder (at least), since that message would be essentially lost for the sender without access to it.

Classic scenario would be the office@domainname.com mailbox.

[#10]

Also access to Contacts would be very useful...

Anyway, one of the problems with the current implementation, I guess, is that in the Sent folder there are also all the messages sent to the Group itsef from the members, i.e. messages that are surfaced (in the Inbox) as conversations.

The "natural" way to implement conversations would have been, IMHO, connecting from the first moment Groups to Yammer (as will happen in the future - but only optionally). In such a way, a fully functional shared mailbox could have been connected to a Group. But this has not happened...

@cfiessinger, another problem is that MS marketing insists in saying that to every Group is connected a shared mailbox, which is technically true, but not with regard to features. Hence users, reading the marketing blabla, expect to find a fully functional shared mailbox, which unfortunately is not the case...

Just my opinion, of course...

[#11]

In general, at least in our world, Distribution Lists are for Notification, Shared Mailboxes are for email-based collaboration.

Replacing a Distribution List with an O365 Group creates a bunch of extra features that are not needed outside of notification. However, we typically package, SharePoint, Yammer, a Shared Mailbox, and a few other tools together as a collaboration set, which IMO is what Groups offers to replace. Instead now we have to keep the Shared Mailbox and Conversations which can serve two separate purposes, but could technically serve the same, simplifying the experience for users.

I can list probably a ton of specific use cases with more time.

[#12]

Perhaps I have not been clear...

I totally agree with you that ALL the functionalities of the underlying shared mailbox should be exposed in a Group!

Only, I am afraid that this will not happen, because the main purpose of the underlying shared mailbox in the current implementation is to give support to the conversations "space" and this makes difficult (or even impossible) full usage of the shared mailbox.

[#13]

So now in europe we have lots of cases where people are using shared mailboxes for service desks. So when an email comes, the team leader use outlook categorization to categorize ewch incoming email. Each category mapped to one of the team members.
So in away or another they are assigning each incoming email to one member to handle that email.

Now we tried to move them to O365 groups because they want to share files and have SP team site.
The surprise was office groups conversations doesn't expose the ability to assign categories.

This is a stopping factor for us to adopt groups.

I guess groups should able to replace shared mailboxes more than it is meant to replace DLs.

[#14]

@Ammar Hasayen

give a look here to my post:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Outlook/quot-collaborative-inbox-quot-like-Gmail/m-p/31955#M2...

can you give me a short overlook/scenario on HOW you use shared mailbox to collaborate?

AFAIK a shared mailbox is NOT a real collaboration tool !

Bye

Stefano

[#15]

A shared mailbox TODAY by itself maybe is not, but that is the point of this thread, it COULD be if the shared mailboxes in groups gained a few additional features.

[#16]

We're trying to solve issues for service centres at our university school that are not handled well by either shared mailboxes or groups, but which would be handled by a better amalgam of the two.

Shared Mailboxes lack

- portability - they require manual setup on all Outlook 2016 clients, and they are not supported at all by mobile clients

- groupware features like file storage and calendars are missing

Groups lack

- automatic SEND AS based on membership

- subfolders, SENT mail in particular

Teams further lack

- UI for external mail inbox (available separately through group UI)

[#17]

---

@Deleted wrote:

...

Shared Mailboxes lack

- portability - they require manual setup on all Outlook 2016 clients, and they are not supported at all by mobile clients

- groupware features like file storage and calendars are missing

Groups lack

- automatic SEND AS based on membership

- subfolders, SENT mail in particular

...

---

@Brent Ellis , almost two years later, has this situation improved at all?

[#18]

There exists an add-in for Outlook named BCCtoGroup that BCC every e-mail sent as/on behalf of Office 365 group to that group.  It means that any message sent as/on behalf of the group becomes visible for all group members.

[#19]

I just set up admin shell for a new business, and boy have things changed...

Main problem I'm looking to solve is the commonly stated issue of having no categorization, outbox, folders, etc in groups. The older shared inbox was far more functional for a multi-person team that monitors a common email alias such as scheduling@, info@, billing@, etc. They need the ability to mark emails as "work-in-progress" or assign a specific team member to respond.

Not sure if shared inbox is still available, but I'm going to look at that next.