Plans to enrich O365 Group conversations with more mailbox-like features?

[Amir Khan]

Currently it appears that O365 groups does not provide the necessary functionality to replace Shared Mailboxes. Due to the limited features offered in Groups, several of our clients are not ready to rollout Groups as a replacement. Furthermore, the Groups conversations work more like a distribution list and less like a mailbox.

Some of the key features that that would make Groups a suitable replacement for Shared Mailboxes are:

1. Option to categorize conversations or organize them in folders or different view based on a classification
2. When Send-As is enabled in a Group, the conversations should be stored in a separate ‘Sent Items’ folder or should be filterable in a view.
3. Option to create simple rules on conversations

We would like to know if Microsoft has are concrete plans to enrich Group conversation with more mailboxes features?

[#2]

How you tried to configure the Group as a regular MailBox in Outlook? You will be able to do there some of the actions you are requesting here such as categorize conversations or move conversations to folders in the group mailbox

[#3]

Hi Juan,
I wasn't aware of this configuration option or must be overlooking it. Can you point me to a ms article on it?
Thanks

[#4]

It's not a Microsoft support article but you can see here what I mean: https://jcgonzalezmartin.wordpress.com/2017/03/21/office-365-how-to-add-an-office-365-group-to-owa/

[#5]

Well it's a discussion that often pops up, however I havent seen any official answer from MS as to whether they are planning to enrich Groups to offer anything beyond the "covnersations" interface. Perhaps @cfiessinger wants to share more? 🙂

[#6]

I've tried that, but I don't get it work. You can't create folders, and the Sent Item-folder stays empty. I also heared Microsoft is going to add Shared Mailboxes to Groups. But didn't saw any screenshots jet.

[#7]

@Amir Khan

Groups are advertised as upgrades for DLs but not for SMs.

Groups use indeed an SM behind the scenes, but, as you have already discovered, most of the shared mailbox features are not exposed, and this at the moment is by design.

AFAIK there are no plans to expose more SM features for Groups.

cc @cfiessinger

[#8]

so what do you advice to use then.

Earlier I made a sharepoint site and added a site mailbox. Then I changed the mail to be more userfriendly. then it was easy for many people to maintain that email address in their own Outlook.

This is now discontinued and microsoft tells me to make a group instead if I try to make a site mail.

But then we loose the posibility to drag mails to folders and most importantly for us to drag attachments directly from Outlook to a separate program for ocr.

[#9]

You could simply use a plain Shared Mailbox.

[#10]

I forgot to say that we also liked the room around the mailbox so we had a place for all the attachments and files that comes with the mail. But I see that we now have to skip all the extra functionality the room mailbox gave us to be able to use the most important features as drag and drop in outlook.

[#11]

Maybe you could try and use Flow to save automatically in a Team Site all attachments you receive by email...

[#12]

I haven't started to look at flow but that's sounds like a really good solution. Thank you:)