{"id":2238,"date":"2022-11-21T13:15:02","date_gmt":"2022-11-21T13:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/m365news.net\/?p=2238"},"modified":"2022-12-12T09:12:09","modified_gmt":"2022-12-12T09:12:09","slug":"comparing-outlook-groups-to-shared-mailboxes-2022-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/m365news.net\/comparing-outlook-groups-to-shared-mailboxes-2022-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Comparing Outlook Groups to Shared Mailboxes (2022 Edition)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
What\u2019s the Best Choice for Email-Based Collaboration?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Microsoft recently rolled out an important update for Outlook Groups to allow group members to create and use folders and inbox rules. An Outlook group is a Microsoft 365 group that uses email for collaboration. The last time Practical365 considered the question of using Groups or shared mailboxes (November 2017) as the basis for teams that need to share email, the judgment was \u201cit depends.\u201d That classic consultant recommendation resulted because each option supported some unique functionality that could be the difference in certain scenarios.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Five years later, the features available in Outlook Groups have improved while shared mailboxes have largely remained static. At least, that\u2019s what you might imagine based on the number of announcements covering new features for shared mailboxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Basics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n First, what functionality can you expect from both options? Here\u2019s a list:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shared Mailbox Plus Points<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Shared mailboxes score over group mailboxes in the following areas:<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s obviously important to preserve copies of sent messages in many circumstances, but this feature is important because it isn\u2019t available for group mailboxes. Instead, you rely on the person who sends the email to copy it to the group mailbox. Perhaps this limitation exists because there\u2019s no official way to expose the Sent Items folder in a group mailbox (you can through OWA by adding the mailbox as a shared folder).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Possibly the most important plus point for shared mailboxes is the familiarity Exchange administrators and users have with these objects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Group Mailboxes Plus Points<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The big plus point for Microsoft 365 Groups is their access to many different resources. Through membership of a group, a user can access the group mailbox, a SharePoint Online team site, a shared OneNote notebook, and optionally Planner and Teams. The last point is somewhat moot because a) Exchange clients can\u2019t see team-enabled groups, and b) if you\u2019re interested in chat-based collaboration, you\u2019re probably not interested in Outlook groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In any case, among the advantages of Outlook groups over shared mailboxes are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The list of favorable points for group mailboxes is less than those for shared mailboxes, but this factor is partially rebalanced by the fact that more of Microsoft\u2019s development effort is focused on Microsoft 365 Groups than on shared mailboxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Making the Choice<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As in 2017, there\u2019s no silver bullet here. Both group and shared mailboxes offer excellent collaboration capabilities. The choice depends on what features a team needs. Some will find aspects of Outlook groups compelling, like the close integration with SharePoint to store and manage documents. Others will consider that it\u2019s sufficient to store documents in mailbox folders and prefer the stronger email feature set enjoyed by shared mailboxes. Isn\u2019t it nice to have a choice?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What\u2019s the Best Choice for Email-Based Collaboration? Microsoft recently rolled out an important update for Outlook Groups to allow group members to create and use folders and inbox rules. An Outlook group is a Microsoft 365 group that uses email for collaboration. The last time Practical365 considered the question of using Groups or shared mailboxes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":2326,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,141],"tags":[21,20,213,167,166],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/m365news.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2238"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/m365news.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/m365news.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/m365news.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/m365news.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2238"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/m365news.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2325,"href":"https:\/\/m365news.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2238\/revisions\/2325"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/m365news.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/m365news.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/m365news.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/m365news.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n
Shared mailboxes support category labels, which can be helpful to mark items for different reasons. For example, a help desk team can mark urgent messages with a red category.<\/li>\n\n\n\nSet-Mailbox -Identity \"Customer Communications\" -MessageCopyForSendOnBehalfEnabled $True -MessageCopyForSentAsEnabled $True<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
\n