Office 365 centralised distribution lists ?

[kennysarmy]

Hi all,

 

 

We're migrating from Mdaemon to Office 365 at Easter and I'm just looking at how I'm going to replicate some stuff.

 

I've a test Office 365 environment and I can't work out how to create a centralised email distribution list.

 

IE. I get emails from our Head's PA which say things like:

 

Please create a group email called

 

chairsgovs

 

with Dom and I read/write

and

the following members (READ ONLY):

 

- list of external email addresses

 

Is it possible to do this under Office 365?

[Boredguy]

We moved all our governors onto our school 365 tenancy, and even the governors for the MAT are using their official trust domain, so that messages are not sent outside the organisation (especially in light of GDPR these days)

 

The distrubution groups we do have, are universal security groups setup in AD that have the e-mail address required. We then add our "All Staff" CN value to the AD attribute "dLMemSubmitPerms" to stop students or external contacts from sending to them.

 

We are looking to move our governors across to 365 Groups to better intergrate their documents and e-mails in a central location instead of having to switch between our website and 365 (plus makes it easier on tablets). Again this is something that works better with them within the tenancy and not an external contact.

[kennysarmy]

We moved all our governors onto our school 365 tenancy, and even the governors for the MAT are using their official trust domain, so that messages are not sent outside the organisation (especially in light of GDPR these days)

 

The distrubution groups we do have, are universal security groups setup in AD that have the e-mail address required. We then add our "All Staff" CN value to the AD attribute "dLMemSubmitPerms" to stop students or external contacts from sending to them.

 

We are looking to move our governors across to 365 Groups to better intergrate their documents and e-mails in a central location instead of having to switch between our website and 365 (plus makes it easier on tablets). Again this is something that works better with them within the tenancy and not an external contact.

 

Thanks.

 

Agreed, and we've setup our Governors with an AD account - but we've loads of central email lists that head's PA and others use that are a combination of internal and external users.

 

Is it possible under O365 to re-create these lists?

[Boredguy]

Our Heads PA has a few of those, but it is not something that is centrally maintained, but rather just a personal contact group in their own account (that way they can adjust any e-mail addresses without needing to pass them on to us)

 

With the 365 Groups, you can add guests with their e-mail address, and they will be able to receive/send e-mails. You can also deligate rights to the Heads PA to keep the membership up to date (and it has the bonus of allowing new members to the group to see the previous e-mails)

[supportman]

Just setup on the Heads PAs account as a normal contact group, you can use internal and external addresses.

 

No need for global groups in this case. This is what we do.

[kennysarmy]

Just setup on the Heads PAs account as a normal contact group, you can use internal and external addresses.

 

No need for global groups in this case. This is what we do.

 

Agreed, but she often sets up lists where the recipients are 95% external and 5% internal - and the 5% can include quite a few teachers who also need to be able to send to the list.

 

I'm guessing they would all have to maintain their own list separately, which is just going to cause issues as external addresses may need to be added and removed....

[HPlum78]

Having individual contact lists setup for this is a data breach waiting to happen! There are loads of ways to set this and would be governed by your data polices I guess that having the type of information that this group would be sharing would be a no to external mail addresses so I am with @Boredguy having these users in your tenancy is the way to go. We have a policy for staff accounts that says they are not allowed to forward their mail this also applies to our contributer accounts that what your govs would have i guess. I am happy to talk through this in more detail when I am not on a screen the size of a postage stamp as you should maintain a golden source for these types of groups amoungst other things.

[kennysarmy]

Having individual contact lists setup for this is a data breach waiting to happen! There are loads of ways to set this and would be governed by your data polices I guess that having the type of information that this group would be sharing would be a no to external mail addresses so I am with @Boredguy having these users in your tenancy is the way to go. We have a policy for staff accounts that says they are not allowed to forward their mail this also applies to our contributer accounts that what your govs would have i guess. I am happy to talk through this in more detail when I am not on a screen the size of a postage stamp as you should maintain a golden source for these types of groups amoungst other things.

 

As an example the Head's PA manages a list called "teachingschoolheads@...."

 

This list is compromised of around 40 external headteachers school addresses PLUS around 5 or 6 internal staff addresses. The external can only READ from the list and the internal can POST to the list.

 

Are you saying every-time the Head's PA wants to create something like this I have to add all these external addresses to my tenancy?

 

I'm really finding my feet with Office 365 - so apologies if I'm asking dumb questions.

Edited February 27, 2019 by kennysarmy