Shared mailboxes

A shared mailbox is an address a team works out of together — support@, accounts@, info@ — rather than one belonging to a person.

Everyone you add sees the same mail in the same place, so a customer's question does not sit unread in somebody's personal inbox while they are on leave.

The shared mailbox belongs to the organization, not to a domain and not to a person. That matters when somebody leaves: you remove them from the mailbox and everything in it stays exactly where it is.

Each member is an existing mailbox holder, added with one of four permissions.

• Full access — read, reply, file, delete, and send as the shared address.
• Send as — mail goes out looking as though it came from the shared address itself. The recipient sees support@example.com.
• Send on behalf — mail goes out identified as the person, acting for the address. The recipient sees both names.
• Read only — can see everything, can send nothing. Useful for a manager who wants visibility without touching the queue.

The list shows how many members each shared mailbox has, and whether it is Active or Suspended.

Creating one also offers an automatic reply — an acknowledgement sent while somebody picks the message up. The setting is stored against the mailbox; whether a reply actually goes out depends on your deployment, so send a test message from an outside address and confirm you get one back before you rely on it. If nothing arrives, raise a ticket rather than rewording the message.

1. Go to Shared Mailboxes and press the button to create one.
2. Enter the address and a display name. The name is what recipients see, so Example Support reads better than support.
3. If you want an acknowledgement sent automatically, turn on the auto-reply and write the message. Say when a real answer will arrive, and say nothing you would not want quoted back to you. Then test it as described above — do not assume it fired.
4. Create it, then open it and add the people who will work from it.
5. Give each member the least permission that lets them do their job. Most teams want Full access for the people answering and Read only for anyone supervising.
6. Ask one member to send a test message to an outside address and confirm it arrives looking the way you expect.

Someone cannot see the shared mailbox. They have to be added as a member; having a mailbox on the same domain is not enough on its own.

Replies come from the wrong name. That is the difference between Send as and Send on behalf. Change the member's permission to the one you actually want.

A member can read but not reply. They are on Read only. Change it to Full access or Send as.

Nothing arrives at all. Check the domain is verified under Setting up your domain. A shared address is still an address on a domain, and the MX record has to be in place.

Somebody left the company. Remove them from the members list. The mail stays with the mailbox, because the mailbox never belonged to them.

• Creating mailboxes — personal addresses
• Transport rules — routing mail automatically
• Go to Shared Mailboxes