Understanding shared mailboxes

[RabbieBurns]

We have a few questions re our shared email account.

We still have issues of emails sitting in the outbox and not being sent through the shared account until we force them through from our person accounts

Also, some days the ones we do send from shared account are in the sent box and other days they are in our personal sent boxes…we cannot see what has been done differently on different days to make this happen.

Would you help us understand it a bit better?

^^

I received this email from an office department and I have no answer for them.

Can anyone assist with what they are experiencing and what I might do to explain and or resolve please?

[vikpaw]

It sounds like there is a shared mailbox, that a number of people have been given access to. In outlook this would be added as another user's data file... or opening another user's folder - i forget the terminology.
This would mean they have another set of outlook folders for the other account and can all see the second inbox, and send from it. This would explain having two outboxes.

The NM here has set this up for a number of shared accounts like, Accounts Office, Calendar User, etc.
Alternatively, it could be they have an extra account added as a pop account or some other way, so they have send as rights.

If they have the option to send as multiple people, then the being in different outboxes could be due to which account it's being sent from. The default should be the account the email was received on, for replies, but on a new email, this would default to the personal one and needs changing manually in the from box.

I have similar trouble with a pop account i use:

If they have a pop account setup with a different smtp - i know that outlook struggles with this, when there is an attachment, so it would look hit and miss if they only occasionally send attachments. The work around for this was to enable cached exchange mode, so there is an offline copy stored locally. This however enabled attachments.

Even with the above mode, they sometimes fail to send via the alternate account, but it's fine if you push it with the default account. I believe this is actually to do with SMTP caps going out of our servers. The ISP has an hourly limit which is enforced in 5 minute intervals, and this can cause the issue. Exchange normally caches the outbound stuff so it looks sent, but when sending via an alternate, sometimes it gets halted, but if i leave it there long enough, it will go. restarting outlook can help. Worst case and it's normally on a reply, if it won't go, you have to move it to drafts and then hit send again, as after a few failures it stops trying for some reason, or at least the send date gets blanked. I normally just copy paste the response into a new email.

Not sure if any of that is relevant, but worth exploring. Maybe they can give you more info on the setup.

[RabbieBurns]

These are both local Exchange accounts, there's no POP. It is like you say, they have 2 mailboxes in Outlook, their own and the shared. When they send from the other mailbox though, it comes up as 'From Jane Bloggs on behalf of Shared Mailbox' Rather than 'From Shared Mailbox'

We have other shared mailboxes around the place and they work as expected; when one of the users sends an email it gets sent 'From' the shared box name, and goes into the correct sent items. Its just this one that seems different

[vikpaw]

They must be doing something wrong when they send if it's going into the wrong sent box. There must also be something else not allowing them to send from the other mailbox on occasion, permissions ..?
Anything that they push through their personal will definitely be in their personal sent box.

[RabbieBurns]

The 'sent on behalf of..' is strange as well as it seems to be sending through their mailbox and not sending directly from the shared mbox

[vikpaw]

They must have delegated permission I.e to change from box contents. Which does the on behalf thing I think.
And also have access to the mailbox itself as they can see the folders. Maybe only one is working.

[sukh]

See what permission they have Send-As or Send on behalf via the EamC. Ask what is required & set, remove the other option not needed. As for where the sent items should appear, ask what is required , in their sent items, or the shared mailbox, then set appropiately.

[RabbieBurns]

OK i think the problem was they had send on behalf permissions in mail flow settings and not send as permissions. I have changed that.

Sent items sent from the shared mailbox should go to the shared sent items. Sent items sent from their own mailbox should go to their own sent items.

Hopefully that should have sorted it, will test tomorrow.

Thanks

[Edu-IT]

OK i think the problem was they had send on behalf permissions in mail flow settings and not send as permissions. I have changed that.

Sent items sent from the shared mailbox should go to the shared sent items. Sent items sent from their own mailbox should go to their own sent items.

Hopefully that should have sorted it, will test tomorrow.

Thanks

I have just tested this and anything sent from my shared mailbox still goes to my own sent items... let me know how you go.

[sukh]

There some regkeys you can play around with, but check out these 2 cmdlets which came in RU4.

Get-MailboxSentItemsConfiguration
Set-MailboxSentItemsConfiguration

[Edu-IT]

I'm on 2k7.

Will give this a try:

Outlook 2010

In Outlook 2010, you need to have SP1 (or greater) installed. Open the registry editor and browse to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\O utlook\Preferences

DWORD: DelegateSentItemsStyle

Data Value: 1

[RabbieBurns]

@sukh

cmdlet Get-MailboxSentItemsConfiguration at command pipeline position 1
Supply values for the following parameters:
Identity: registrar


RunspaceId                  : 1c305deb-19dc-4124-bc6f-2e4c06d1f92a
SendAsItemsCopiedTo         : Sender
SendOnBehalfOfItemsCopiedTo : Sender
Identity                    :
IsValid                     : True

Is that what it should be?
@Edu-IT would you set that to 1 or 0 to keep the sent item in the correct sent mailbox?

[sukh]

@Rabbie - You don't want to be using both. You will get undesired behaviour. Either set using Set-MailboxSentItemsConfiguration (Mystery of the sent item! - Sachin's Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs) or use the regkey. Regkey needs to be set to one. Make sure you have the latest CU + SP for Office.

Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\O utlook\Preferences
Name: DelegateSentItemsStyle
Type: DWORD
Value: 1

[RabbieBurns]

Thanks sukh, the reg key worked a treat!

[Edu-IT]

Good to hear. I'm going to give it a whirl tomorrow.