Common Contacts List

Copper Contributor

Hi Guys,

 

With Outlook is it possible to share selected individual contacts into a team pool which showed up in everyone else’s contact list as a common contact.

 

We would then like to be able to use these common contacts in a distribution list in order to send media release emails to.

 

So essentially, everyone in the sales team can contribute to a common media contacts list and the marketing dept can use this list to deliver the marketing material.

 

Is there a way to achieve this?

 

Much appreciated, Damien Conlon

 

4 Replies
Hi,

You would create these as External Contacts in Exchange which would then show in everyone’s address book, and which you can add to a distribution list

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/admin/email/add-user-or-contact-to-distribution-list?view...

AFAIK, you cannot pool individual contacts into a distribution list as such

Hope that answers your question.

Best, Chris

Storing them in the GAL is one option, however that can add clutter and generally requires admin permissions, plus you cannot manage those directly from Outlook, thus it will be a pain for the end users. So the usual suggestion is to use something like a PF Contacts folder: https://www.quadrotech-it.com/blog/create-a-company-shared-contacts-folder-in-office-365/

 

You can achieve similar results with a Contacts folder stored in a shared mailbox, though it's a bit more "manual" to add those in Outlook.

Sticking to my guns on this one - external contacts is a far better experience across all devices than a PF or a contacts folder in a shared mailbox. Definitely true about it being admin led though it loses value if you want users to self manage it.

Best, Chris

Hi Guys,

 

Thanks for the replies.

 

A key requirement of this was that it could be self-managed, as we were trying to get away from the job being the responsibility of one person who had no sooner collated the static list then the  information would start to decay as contact information slowly changed. We wanted a way that each team member could contribute their own contacts and amend or delete them as necessary keeping everything fresh and in real-time.

 

It sounds like the public folder method might be the way to go. I'll follow the method on the link provided and run a little experiment and see how it works.

 

Really appreciate the input, you guys are a valuable resource!

 

Many thanks, Damien