which 365 group do i need ?

[mrstrong]

Hi,

 

the head wants to send emails to a list of external email addresses

when one of the external recipients replies the other recipients must not see the reply e.g. only the head sees replies

and don't want the possibility of an accidental reply all from the recipient (confidential content)

if possible head also wants to be able to give other internal staff access to email threads (messages sent and replies)

 

is this possible ? Just looking here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/create-groups/compare-groups?view=o365-worldwide

 

maybe I could create a "distribution group" with the external emails and also a shared mailbox

then head sends to the "distribution group" from the shared mailbox (or would they need to use BCC) ?

Edited May 20, 2022 by mrstrong

[NicholasEsping]

As long as you BCC the address reply all will go back to only the sender.

[mrstrong]

I did a few experiments. I tried to create a distribution list but it looks like you can only add

internal emails, read that you would need to add external emails as contacts first and then add them !?

 

Anyway here's what I did for reference:

I created a shared mailbox and blocked user sign in (MS advice). (edit: and add staff members) Then from my outlook web client

I click my picture top right and open another mailbox (the shared mailbox). Opens in another tab,

then select people on left and Your contact lists, create new contact list (think this is just for this shared mailbox?)

can add external emails to this contact list (no need to create individual contacts first)

 

Then send from shared mailbox to the new contact list, recipients can see all other recipients but like

you said if I BCC to the contact list (don't even need to put an email address in TO) recipients can't see others

and reply and reply all seems to just go back to the shared mailbox.

 

So I think this is a solution?!

Edited May 25, 2022 by mrstrong

[CHiLL]

I'd set up another shared mailbox and delegate access to allow the head to access it. The manual way is to copy and paste the external email addresses into the BCC field (I believe there's a max limit of 500 recipients to limit spam emails, so you may need to send a few emails, depending on your cohort size). The head can then just access that mailbox to view and respond to replies.

 

For our newsletter, we took it one step further by using SalamanderAD. It creates basic AD accounts, named with their unique ID number (which corresponds with how they match SIMS details to AD accounts). Salamander populates this AD account with the parent's email address in the email address field, the corresponding student's name in the description for ease and is also a member of an AD security group called newsletter. This security group also has an email address of [email protected] and we use that group to send the newsletter to. So the person that sends the weekly newsletter only needs to BCC in [email protected] and it will send to all parental emails within that group. I hope that makes sense?