Using Shared Mailbox in Office 365

Now often, you want to have a common mail address for everyone within a team to monitor and interact through like [email protected] or [email protected]

Office 365 provides this capability with something called as Shared Mailbox.

Features of Shared Mailbox

1. Shared Mailbox doesn’t need an Exchange license.
2. Shared Mailbox doesn’t have its own credentials. Users add this mailbox to theirs and use their own credentials to access it.
3. Shared Calendar is available in a Shared Mailbox where everyone can see who is available when

Setting up Shared Mailbox

1. You’ll need to be an administrator in Office 365 to be able to create a Shared Mailbox. Navigate to Office 365 Admin Center and find Shared Mailboxes options under Groups.
   
2. Click on Add a mailbox
   
3. I’ll call it [email protected], for example. And click Add.
   
4. I selected both the users seen in above step to add to the Shared Mailbox.
5. Those members are seen on the detail pane of the selected Shared Mailbox as shown below
6. Shared mailbox gets created within moments!

Adding Users to the Shared Mailbox

Only users who have an Exchange Online license can be added to Shared Mailboxes.

1. Click on the mailbox and then on Edit in Members area to add O365 users to the mailbox as shown below
   
2. Click on +Add Members to add users to the mailbox.
   
3. You’ll find all the members who already have an Exchange Online license are eligible for adding to the shared mailbox.
   
4. I selected both the users seen in above step to add to the Shared Mailbox.
5. Those members are seen on the detail pane of the selected Shared Mailbox as shown below
   

Adding Shared Mailbox to Outlook

I will show the OWA example in this blog to show how to add the shared mailbox to the user’s Outlook

1. Let’s assume we have the mailbox [email protected] and we want to add the shared mailbox [email protected] to pwagh’s mailbox.
2. In OWA, right click on the root folder of the mailbox and click on Add shared folder



3. Start typing the name of the Shared Mailbox and it should auto-populate the same for you. Select the Shared Mailbox and click Add.
4. The mailbox should then appear in your OWA.
   Note: It takes a few minutes until the Shared Mailbox is accessible from your mailbox after adding it

   Hope this was helpful.