Shared Mailboxes

Shared Mailboxes are primarily intended as a mailbox object that is not directly connected to any one individual user. These objects are ideal for departmental mailboxes or addresses, such as help@domain.rutgers.edu or dean@domain.rutgers.edu. By using a shared mailbox you can separate the email addressed directly to a user from that sent to a specific title or function that may change hands over time. Not only does this allow for finer control over mailboxes, but also dramatically improves business continuity. These types of objects are primarily used for managing email.

Privileges: there are three ways to grant access to a shared mailbox, please see the definitions below to see how these different access types may fit you or your department’s needs:

Full Access allows a delegated user to open the target mailbox and operate upon it as if they were logged in as that mailbox. The Full access delegate may modify folders, create new ones, manage all items in the mailbox, create and manage share permissions for individual folders, and modify mailbox settings as if they were the user or resource itself. The target mailbox may be opened via OWA or Outlook.

The Full Access delegation does have some limits. First, granting Full Access to a delegate does not implicitly grant Send-As privileges. This property can be delegated separately.

Folder sharing permissions are a different level of access. A user operating in their own mailbox, or a user with Full Access to a mailbox may share access to individual folders when necessary with various permission levels outside the scope of this document.

Full Access could also be considered as Ownership of a mailbox. Consider how a shared mailbox may be managed. For example, if help@domain.rutgers.edu is a shared mailbox, a delegated administrator may want to grant a few different distinct level of access to all the users who need to access it. For example, Full Access may be granted to one to two users acting as owners and managers of the mailbox in question, and these “mailbox owners” could then delegate read access to the folders other users need to access. Not all users with access to the shared folders need be Full Access users.

Send-As allows a delegated user to send mail as the mailbox.

Shared folders, subfolders, or Calendars allow for the delegated user to access, read, reply-to, and modify mail, folders, and calendars within a shared mailbox based on individualized access levels defined by the Full Access owner of the shared mailbox. Sharing mail folders, subfolders or calendars can be accomplished by the Full Access user via logging into the mailbox. In a properly configured environment the majority of users will access the shared mailbox by it being shared. The advantage to this method is that the Full Access user can set or remove privileges themselves without the need to contact an administrator (Full Access can only be set by your administrator – the Help Desk in the case of the Newark connect domain). Sharing can be configured quickly for larger groups by defining that larger group using security groups and then sharing the folder, subfolder, or calendar with that security group.

• To have a new shared mailbox created please send an email to help@newark.rutgers.edu with the following information: Contact information of requester (Name, Department, Phone #), Requested Display Name, Requested Email Address, Delegated Full Access User(s), Delegated SendAs User(s).
• To make a change to an existing shared mailbox please send an email to help@newark.rutgers.edu with the following information: Contact information of requester (Name, Department, Phone #), email address of shared mailbox to be modified, and detailed discription of the changes requested.