The GuruXP Blog

Definition and Functionality

Distribution Groups are a functionality that allows to receive E-Mails under a virtual address and distribute them between their members.

An example of this would be a department like sales with one or more employees that have the need of forwarding all the E-mails sent to an address like sales@contoso.com.

With this functionality we will not only avoid configuring a POP account PC by PC, but also be able to assign permissions to users who want to send E-mails as the department address or on behalf of in difference to the Distribution Groups of other platforms.

Configuration through the Office365 Portal

– The first thing we have to do is access our Office365 portal (http://portal.microsoftonline.com).
– Then we need to access the Exchange Control Panel or ECP clicking on the upper side of the screen where it says «Admin» and then on «Exchange». (Click here to access the ECP if you have a Small Business Plan).

– Once inside, click on «Groups».

– Click on the «+» Symbol and then where it says «Distribution Group» – Set the properties of the group we want to create:

Display Name: this is the name it will appear on the Global Address List and also on the recipients as the Department.

Alias: this field is the identifier that the system will use to localize and identify this group.

Description: we can assign a short description of the use we’ll use the group for.

Owners: indicates who will have the permissions to make modifications over this group.

Members: here we will define who will form part of this group, allowing to receive all the messages sent to the virtual address.

Joining approval permissions: we can define if the employees can join this group without any approval (open), they can be manually added by any owner without having the option to send a request (closed), or if the employees can send requests to join the group in order to be accepted or rejected by any owner of the group (Owner Approval).

Leave permissions: we can define if the members can leave the group without any permission or approval (open), or if it needs to be approved by any owner (closed).

– Once you’ve created the group, we can define additional properties doing a double click on it.

The screens we will find are:

General, where we can define or edit options like Display Name, the SMTP address it will use, Description and something very important, the ability to hide the group from the Global Address List (GAL).

Ownership, where we can set the owners that can make modifications to the group, including the new member approvals.

Membership, here we can set the members or recipients of the mails sent to the virtual address.

Membership Approval, to set the permissions config to join or leave the group.

Delivery Management, where we can set the senders that can send messages to this group. By default the selected option is set to «Only senders inside the organization», so if we want to receive messages from outside the organization we must select the other option where it says «Senders inside and outside of my organization». Also we can set specific members that can send to this group.

Message Approval, here we can set the message flow to moderate the messages in case we want to approve the received messages before distributing it to its members. We can also define the moderators we want and if we want to exclude from this rule certain senders in who we trust. Also have the possibility to notify the sender in case his message has been rejected.

E-mail Options, from this section we can define one or various SMTP addresses to be used to receive using this group.

Mailtip, we can also define the message that will appear to users inside our organization using Microsoft Outlook when selecting the group as recipient. For example a message indicating it can be a delay of two days for answering the message.

Group Delegation, here we can assign permissions to «Send As» or «Send on Behalf Of» to users so they can send messages using the group as the sender.

Configuration through PowerShell

– First of all we need to prepare our environment to connect with our Office365 subscription via PowerShell.

– Then we only need to run the following:

New-DistributionGroup -Name «Group Name» -DisplayName «Display Name» -Alias «Group Alias» -PrimarySmtpAddress dept@company.com

– Add the members:

Add-DistributionGroupMember  «Group Name» -Member user@company.com -BypassSecurityGroupManagerCheck

– Set the group to allow messages to be received from outside and inside the org:

Set-DistributionGroup «Group Name» -RequireSenderAuthenticationEnabled $False

– Assign other owners of the group:

Set-DistributionGroup -Identity «Group Name» –ManagedBy user@company.com -BypassSecurityGroupManagerCheck

– Add additional SMTP addresses to the group:

Set-DistributionGroup «Group Name» -EmailAddresses SMTP: dept@company.com, alias@company.com

– Hide the group from the Global Address List (GAL):

Set-DistributionGroup «Group Name» -HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled $True

I hope you find this useful.

It’s been time since I wanted to write a post like this to help people understand and choose the mailbox to be used with information sharing in organizations with Office365.

Since the point is to be able to implement the most adequate option for managing info to be shared, I’ve decided to name it «Shared info mailboxes on Office365».

So let’s start enumerating the options we have and describe them as well:

• Distribution Groups (DG): although is not a mailbox as well, it’s an option totally valid and recommended to keep in front. These are addresses enabled for sending and receiving departmental messages, but enabling all those messages to be distributed to their members as let them to respond as the department and no as individuals. It has no cost and you can practically create as much DGs as you want to.
• Shared Mailboxes: this type of mailbox allows us to send and receive departmental messages (i.e: administration@contoso.com) working like a team on a separate space than the personal mailbox, without the need of an additional license (as long as you don’t exceed the 5Gb storage limit, if you want more then you must assign a license allowing you to get up to 25Gb). Of course the user will still need an individual Exchange Online license assigned in order to access this mailbox.
•  Site Mailboxes: it’s like a shared mailbox, but the difference is the Platform where it resides, specifically in SharePoint Online so it can be viewed as a library inside the intranet portal keeping the attachments and Exchange Online for saving the body of the messages. This type of mailbox can be mail enabled in order to receive messages but doesn’t allows you to send messages as a departmental unit. It’s limit is 5Gb and needs no license to be assigned, but the user still needs an Exchange Online and a SharePoint Online license.
•  Modern Public Folders: that’s it, «Modern». Due that Microsoft removed the public folders functionality of their online Platform and now they’ve implemented it, they’ve decided to do it using the Exchange 2013 technology with some performance improvements. This the of mailbox is maybe the most comfortable of the options when it has to do with large orgs because it has no hard limits on the number of concurrent connections to it. As same as the rest of the options, it doesn’t need no license to be assigned but of course the users that want to access them still need an Exchange Online license to be assigned. Its limit is awesome compared to the other options as it gives 25Gb per public folder mailbox and you can get up to 50 public folder mailboxes, that’s about 1,25Tb of free storage.

In order to make things easy for you, I’ve decided to make a comparison table of what I think are the most important things to keep in mind when making a decision over every situation:

It’s not a big thing but sure helps someone. Although I will be writing a single post for ever type of mailbox named here so I can show up how to configure them and tell the positive and negative things about them.

Until next one!