Everything You Need To Know About Shared Mailboxes in Office 365

With the impressive shift to remote work that has occurred in the past few years, it may be time to move your business operations to the web. Consider migrating your legacy archive data to the cloud for more efficient and secure collaboration and enhanced communication options, such as Microsoft 365 groups and shared mailboxes.

When you transition to Microsoft 365, you will be able to manage your team and your business from a single interface and simultaneously add the latest in security and convenience for your organization.

What Are Shared Mailboxes?

A shared mailbox is utilized when two or more people need to use the same email address. For example, your company may have an email address specifically for customers wishing to make a reservation or one for people seeking shipping information. Alternatively, you may assign an email address to a location or position, such as the front desk or the shipping department.

In these cases, it's likely that more than one person will be handling responses to mail at a given address. Setting up a shared mailbox is the ideal way to manage mail when you have more than one user in an inbox.

How Do You Create Shared Mailboxes?

Sign in with an Exchange administrator account or with your Microsoft 365 global administrator credentials and select the Exchange admin center. Once you're in the admin center, navigate to Teams and Groups, then select Shared Mailboxes. From here, simply follow the prompts and complete the form. You'll note that the email address you create for the shared mailbox must be under the domain associated with the Office 365 account. This is generally your own organization's domain.

What Are the Rules and Options for Shared Mailboxes?

Microsoft Exchange is a versatile and easy-to-use software solution. There are only a few things to be aware of before you create your mailboxes.

Manage Licenses and Permissions

A shared mailbox doesn't require a license unless you will be using more than 50GB. If you exceed the storage limit, you need to license the mailbox, which increases your storage capacity to 100GB.

Permission to access the mailbox must be expressly given to each user. All users must have domain-based email. In other words, everyone who uses the shared mailbox must have a company email address, not an email service hosted elsewhere such as Gmail.

As an administrator, you control who uses each shared mailbox. You also have the ability to convert a standard mailbox to a shared mailbox or to remove a license that you no longer require from a shared mailbox.

Integrate With Outlook

A user can employ Microsoft Outlook to access a shared mailbox from the web. Alternatively, users can download the Outlook app for iOS or for Android to access email from a shared mailbox using a phone or other device.

What Are the Limitations of Shared Mailboxes?

There are a few situations in which you might opt for another solution instead of a shared mailbox.

Reasons To Opt for a Microsoft 365 Group Instead

A shared mailbox is only for use by people within your organization. People with external email addresses such as Gmail or Yahoo Mail cannot access these special mailboxes. You might have these associated with your organization if you use external agencies or contractors. Additionally, you cannot prevent one of the users of a shared mailbox from deleting email messages.

Another limitation that is commonly relevant in larger organizations is the number of concurrent users. While there is no set limit on the number of people who can share a mailbox, you may find that you experience inconsistent performance if you have more than 25 users trying to access a shared mailbox at the same time.

If any of these items are a concern, consider creating a Microsoft 365 group instead.  Groups can include members regardless of their email addresses. Only the group administrator can delete messages shared in a group. Additionally, having an abundance of concurrent users will not cause a problem.

Encryption Concerns

One other limitation is worthy of note: Mail sent from a shared mailbox can't be encrypted. This type of mailbox lacks the necessary context to be assigned a key. However, users can send mail that they've encrypted with their own keys if they desire. Other users with access to the same public key will be able to read these messages.

How Do Shared Mailboxes Fit Into Microsoft 365?

Shared mailboxes are a feature of Exchange Online, which is part of Microsoft 365. Microsoft 365 allows your team members to communicate and collaborate from anywhere and gives you the ability to manage your business operations from one central location.

You can access Exchange Online to set up and manage any shared mailbox right from the admin center of Microsoft 365. You can also handle users, billing, and licensing from the admin center, as well as generate activity reports and manage Microsoft 365 groups.

How Can You Migrate to Microsoft 365 To Utilize Shared Mailboxes?

When you're ready to move to cloud-based office management with Microsoft 365, select a team that specializes in secure migration. Opt for experts in handling sensitive business and personal data and protecting the security and integrity of your information.

At Cloudficient, we can help you migrate your operations to the cloud. We are migration experts, and we can safely and efficiently move your legacy archives to the web and help you achieve the optimal setup for your organization to thrive.

We help your team with everything they need to collaborate securely and effectively with all the latest innovations from Microsoft. Easily manage shared mailboxes, groups, calendars, and even eDiscovery processes from a single interface.

Contact us at Cloudficient today to discuss migrating your business.

With unmatched next generation migration technology, Cloudficient is revolutionizing the way businesses retire legacy systems and transform their organization into the cloud. Our business constantly remains focused on client needs and creating product offerings that match them. We provide affordable services that are scalable, fast and seamless.

If you would like to learn more about how to bring Cloudficiency to your migration project, visit our website, or contact us.