Working with a Shared Mailbox

Benefits of Shared Mailboxes

There’s a few scenarios where they are useful and things to consider:

• there’s effectively no limit to the number of them but we recommend keeping it sensible
• there’s no license cost for shared mailboxes however if you don’t apply a license to them they you cannot use Microsoft’s Advanced Threat Protection to protect them so extra care should be taken with the messages in there
• yes they can still benefit from the Spam Control settings in Exchange

Note: to work with these your Office 365 Admin will first have to create the Shared Mailbox and delegate access to the appropriate people… These must be licensed users.

Shared Mailboxes and Security

Security Best Practice is to BLOCK SIGN-IN for Shared Mailboxes to prevent brute force attacks on their static password and we cannot do 2FA on them…

We recommend adding an Exchange Online Plan 2 license for sensitive 'shared mailboxes' such as sales@, finance@ or accounts@ and so on as this allows for retention policies and additional security.

How do I access a Shared Mailbox ?

It’s quite easy, here we will outline the most common ways…

Shared Mailbox Access via Outlook Mobile App

The Outlook mobile App (for Apple/iOS and Android) supports Shared Mailboxes.

You add them the same way as you do other mailboxes and if you have rights to the shared mailbox you won’t need the password…

Open Outlook on your mobile (phone or tablet) and go to settings where you will see something like this. Click Add Email Account and choose Add Shared Mailbox to be prompted to choose the shared mailbox.

Simply complete the email address of the shared mailbox you need, click "Add" to add it to your Outlook Mobile App:

Shared Mailbox Access via Outlook Web Access

Often the most convenient, simply open our Outlook Web Access (OWA) and click your name and then click open another mailbox:

In the Open another mailbox dialog box just start typing the name of the shared mailbox, office will auto prompt so you can select it from a list… when you see it click on it and it will open in a new tab right in your browser.

Shared Mailbox Access via Outlook Desktop App

When an Admin delegates a shared mailbox to you it will normally appear in your Outlook Desktop App automatically, you won’t have to do anything to activate it but it may take up to an hour to appear. For instant access you can use the Outlook Web Access option above until the mailbox appears in your Outlook Desktop App.