How to enable mail enabled contacts in 365?

[James Williamson]

We migrated all of our on prem mail enabled contacts to 365 but they all seem to lack internal emails associated to them. 

Also when we go to create net new mail enabled contacts, there is a place for the external email address but now where to set or see the internal domain email address associated with it.

For example on prem:

We'd create Jo Blow as a mail contact.

He'd be assigned Jo.Blow@company.com and we'd set his external email as Jo.Blow@gmail.com for example.

In 365 the "Jo.Blow@company.com" seems to be missing from all of our migrated mail contacts and does not seem to be there for any net new mail contacts we create. 

We need external people to be able to email these mail contacts as often part of the point is obscuring personal emails or simplifying hard to remember emails (no one will remember rocketman856863@yahoo.com) and also just generic branding of using our company domain for communication with 3rd party consultants.

Please help me fix the mail contacts already migrated and let me know how to create net new with my company domain email associated to them as they were on prem.

Cheers,

James

[#2]

Have a look at this article: https://newsignature.com/articles/exchange-online-mail-contact-with-internal-and-external-email-addr...

Does it help?

[#3]

Thank you for your help - I appreciate it! 

I haven't tried it yet as I'm connecting from a Mac and not quite sure how to setup PS connection with the appropriate cmd lets to get this working.

This was all doable in GUI from the on-prem system - is there no way to do this by GUI in 365? If so - how? If not, is it on the roadmap? It seems odd to go to web based SaaS management and then have to use PS to adjust parameters. PS is ok, but it shouldn't be the only way.

[#4]

If all the settings were exposed in the GUI, this will become enormously bloated...

Also, many admins are not really expert, so taking the less basic settings away from the GUI is reasonable.

All in all, the trend is therefore to expose only the basic settings in the GUI.

[#5]

I disagree - when you deploy a SaaS solution there should be no need for backend work. Even ignoring that comment, things that were in the UI on prem before, should at least be in the UI in 365. Hiding past visible functions is a regression and not Admin friendly, especially as many admins do not have PowerShell experience are just technically-ish minded which is what 365 is about lowering the threshold of skills to manage systems through SaaS/GUI

[#6]

@James Williamson 

I'm sure you've solved your problem by now, but I found this article that might be helpful while tackling a similar issue for myself. 

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/mail-enabled-user-licenses/de6d926a-3d50-402f...

[#7]

To anyone else who finds this issue - the linked article to the newsignature domain above has now been redirected to a sales page for an IT consulting services firm.