Guide on How to Assign Emails in a Shared Mailbox: Explained

One of these features is the shared mailbox where we can manage emails shared among users, and communicate with other users using Microsoft Teams. Many companies have created shared mailboxes for their teams so that they can handle every type of communication. In this guide, you will learn how to assign emails in a shared mailbox in Outlook, and how assigning emails in the shared mailbox in Outlook can help you. 

What is a Shared Mailbox in Office 365?

An account administrator can create an Office 365 mailbox and then can invite other teammates to join the mailbox. Every person that has been assigned to a mailbox can access it completely. This means that they have access to reading emails, replying to them, and forwarding these emails. They can also see which emails have not been replied to yet and which have and also can read the replies of other team members. Emails in the shared mailbox show the address of the shared mailbox and not the emails of individuals. 

Every user in a shared mailbox needs to have an Office 365 subscription since the access is through the individual emails of these users. 

Why Do Users Use Outlook Shared Mailbox?

There are several reason because of which users use shared mailboxes. Before we learn how to assign emails in a shared mailbox in Outlook, we will take a look at these reasons: 

• Helps in monitoring emails and sends them from a centralised account

One of the benefits is that different team members can look at and send emails from a single account. There is no need to forward emails to the issue to be looked at by the appropriate team member. 

• Users can handle customer enquiries more swiftly

A shared mailbox allows team members to respond more quickly to enquiries made by customers. Since, any team member can reply to any message, any free member can tend to enquiries which makes the customer experience better.

• Outlook calendar information is shared. 

A shared mailbox allows businesses to manage the customer appointments in a single calendar. Due to this, everyone knows the schedule of every team member on any given date and time. 

What Can a Shared Mailbox be Used For?

There are many different reasons due to which a shared mailbox can be chosen by teams. Every department in an organisation can benefit from using a shared mailbox. Before assigning emails in a shared mailbox in Outlook, we need to learn its uses. Here are the following uses: 

1. Faster enquiries can be made to inquiries by the customer service teams. 
2. Media opportunities can be grabbed as soon as they receive incoming emails by PR teams. 
3. To ensure that the team leaders feel like they are a priority to the organisation. 
4. Sales Teams can ensure that they make deals as soon as the opportunity arises. 
5. Teams can be kept up to date regarding their projects. 

In a world where everything moves so quickly, keeping up with other team members has become very important. 

Creating a Shared Mailbox in Office 365

Setting up a shared mailbox is a simple and straightforward process. In order to create a shared mailbox to assign emails in a shared mailbox in Outlook, follow the steps given below: 

1. Log in to Exchange admin center to create a shared mailbox. 
2. Go to Office 365 Groups > Shared Mailboxes. 
3. In the shared mailbox page, select the Add a Mailbox option, and then enter the name of the shared mailbox.
4. Select the add option and then click on add members option. 
5. Now check the users you want to invite to the mailbox and choose the save option. 
6. Choose the close button to finish the setup. 
7. You need to now block sign in for the shared mailbox to keep it safe from hackers. 
8. The invited users will use their individual credentials to log in. 
9. In the admin center, go to the Users > Active Users. Now locate the account used for the shared mailbox. 
10. Select block user. Another window will appear where you can select block the user from signing in. 
11. You can finally select the save changes option. 

Changing the Name of the Shared Mailbox

1. In the admin centre, you can go to the Teams & Groups option, and then to the Shared mailbox.
2. Choose the shared mailbox that you want to edit, and then click on the Basic information > Edit.
3. Enter the name that you want for the shared mailbox.
4. Click on the save option.

Setting up Automatic Replies From a Shared Mailbox

1. In the admin centre, choose the Teams&groups option > Shared mailbox.
2. Select the shared mailbox that you want to edit, and then edit under the automatic replies option.
3. Choose the checkbox option that allows you to send automatic replies to sender inside the organisation.
4. Enter the reply that you want other people to receive in or outside the organisation.
5. Click on the save button.

Adding or Removing Members

1. In the admin centre, click on Teams & groups > shared mailboxes.
2. Select the shared mailbox and then click on edit under the members option.
3. Now you can select the add members option, and search or select a member that you want to add.
4. Click on the save button.
5. To remove members, you can use the search tool to find the member, and deselect the member and choose the remove member option.

Uses of the Office 365 Shared Mailbox

Now that the shared mailbox is up and running, you can finally start using it and assign emails in a shared mailbox in Outlook. Here are the uses of the Office 365 shared mailboxes.  

• Configuring the mailbox in such a way that all sent items are visible to everyone

The emails by default, sent from the shared mailbox are saved to the sent folder of the user who sent the email. Now it can be made visible to all the other users. To enable this setting, 

1. Go to admin center. 
2. Select shared mailbox settings.
3. Select sent items and choose edit. 

• Add the shared mailbox to each member in Outlook

Enable automapping to ensure that every individual can access the shared inbox (by default, automapping is enabled but incase during the setup you changed this setting, you would need to enable it). Then you can ask the team members to restart Outlook. After restarting, each user’s mailbox should have the shared mailbox. 

• Making the shared inbox accessible from mobile devices. 

You can log into the mobile application and add the shared mailbox under the add account option to access shared mailboxes from a mobile device. 

• Sending replies automatically.

If you want to send replies automatically, you can set it up in the admin center. Follow the steps to do so: 

1. Groups > Shared mailboxes.
2. Select the shared mailbox that you want to send replies from.
3. Choose automatic replies > Edit. 
4. After the toggle is turned on, choose whether you want to send replies outside or in the organisation. Type out the reply you want to be sent. 
5. Click on the save button. 

What are the Limitations of a Shared Mailbox in Office 365?

There are several limitations which can be challenging to the organisation that use shared mailboxes to assign emails in a shared mailbox in Outlook and work efficiently. Here are the limitations: 

• Collaboration can be challenging.

There is no option to directly collaborate in Outlook through shared mailboxes. Teams cannot have discussions about emails within the account. You would have to use the teams app to collaborate and communicate with the team members. This means that you need to leave your mailbox and switch to other application in order to communicate with your team member. 

• There is no insights available for team metrics. 

Lack of analysis in shared mailboxes leads to teams that do not have insights. One of the main reasons why several organisation opt for shared mailboxes is to improve the response time for the customers. But, there are no metrics available in the shared mailbox in Office 365. 

• Limit to the Access.

The number of users who can access the shared mailbox is limited because when several members try to access a shared mailbox at the same time, some of the connections can fail. Hence, you may want to reduce the number of users who can access the shared mailbox to prevent this from happening. 

• There is no integration with other apps.

There is no way organisations can integrate shared mailboxes with other apps which limits the productivity of its users. 

How to Assign Older Emails to the Shared Mailbox in Outlook?

In case you want to assign old emails to the shared mailbox, you would have to shift all your files and data to a new account since only the newer emails are assigned with this method and older emails are left out. Migrating from your old account to the new one will also help you resolve all the other issues that you might be facing. This is because more often than not, issues are related with account settings and moving to a new one would resolve most of your problems

A simple way of shifting all your files and data is to use an automated tool that makes the entire process much simpler and help you be productive. One of the greatest tool in the industry is SysTools Office 365 to Office 365 Migration Tool. By using this tool, you can migrate your entire mailbox including mails, documents, contacts, and calendars. 

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Steps to perform the migration: 

1. Install and run the tool. 
2. Select the source and destination as Office 365.
3. Select the items such as contacts, calendars, mails, and documents to migrate. 
4. You can opt for date-based filtering and enable the permissions for the migration process.
5. Click on the next option.
6. Enter the source Admin ID and Application ID and validate them. 
7. Enter the destination Admin ID and Application ID and validate them.
8. After validation is complete, you can now click on the start migration button to start the migration process.

Conclusion

Microsoft 365 has gained a lot of popularity after it introduced the Outlook application along with other apps in its productivity suite. This app has changed the way we collaborate with others and our productivity has also improved. Over the years microsoft has introduced many new features to Outlook including the shared mailbox feature. 

In this article, we learnt how to assign emails in a shared mailbox in Outlook and what we can do if we are having issues with our shared mailbox.