Shared Mail for Teams: info@ and sales@ in Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace

Almost every company has an address that customers write to: info@, sales@, support@ or invoice@. Often such an address is tied to one person, or all colleagues use it by signing in with a single password. Both approaches carry their own risk: when the employee is on vacation, an email gets a delayed reply, while a shared password is hard to manage and reduces security.

In this article we look at how Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace address this issue and what to consider before enabling it.

What a shared mailbox is

A shared mailbox is an address that several people see at the same time and on whose behalf they can send replies without having to leave their personal account. Each colleague works with their own profile, so it is clear who does what, and when an employee leaves, it is enough to remove their access. There is no longer any need to change a shared password and send the new one to everyone.

Microsoft 365: Shared mailbox

In Microsoft 365 (Exchange Online) this feature is called Shared mailbox. According to Microsoft's documentation, a shared mailbox generally does not need a separate license. A license is needed only in a few cases:

• when the mailbox holds more than 50 GB of data;
• when archiving (in-place archiving) is enabled;
• when litigation hold is set on the mailbox.

In such cases the mailbox needs an Exchange Online Plan 2 license, which raises the limit to 100 GB. An important detail is that, to use the mailbox, each employee must have their own Exchange Online license, although no additional account is needed for the shared mailbox itself.

Technically, a shared mailbox comes with a user account whose password is generated by the system itself and is unknown to people. Microsoft recommends that this account should not be used to sign in to the mailbox. Employees see the mailbox in their own Outlook; for this, the administrator must give them the appropriate permissions.

Another useful capability: the mailbox of a departed employee can be converted to a shared mailbox so that their correspondence is not lost and colleagues can continue working. Before conversion, the mailbox must have a license. After conversion the license can be removed, but the mailbox size must not exceed 50 GB. If the size is larger, excess large emails must first be deleted, or the license must stay.

There is also an important limitation: since a shared mailbox has no password, authorized sending on its behalf from devices such as a scanner, or from other software, cannot be done directly. In that case you need a different solution.

Google Workspace: collaborative inbox

In Google Workspace a similar role is played by a Google Groups group configured as a collaborative inbox. Google's help page gives exactly this example: you can create a group with the address support@your-domain, add employees, and also allow people outside the organization to send emails to it.

The advantage of this approach is that work with messages is distributed among the group members. According to Google's documentation, it is possible to:

• assign a member responsible for a topic;
• mark a topic as closed;
• edit tags;
• filter topics by tag, status or assignee.

In practice this means the team can see which request has been taken by whom and which is still unanswered. It is important that the group's settings allow external senders to send emails, otherwise customers' emails will not reach the address.

Note the difference: the collaborative inbox works not in Gmail but in the Google Groups interface. So you will need to introduce employees to this separate space. If the team needs a simpler scheme, there is also Gmail delegation, in which the address owner gives other people permission to read, send and delete emails on their behalf. In this option the work takes place in regular Gmail, but you no longer have the tools for distributing tasks.

Which route to choose

• If the team already uses Microsoft 365 and works in Outlook, Shared mailbox is the natural choice.
• If the team is in Google Workspace and needs to distribute emails, the collaborative inbox is more convenient.
• If the volume of requests is large and you need integration with a CRM, telephony or reporting, a separate program may be useful.

A short checklist before rollout

• Decide which addresses should be shared (info@, sales@, support@, invoice@) and who belongs to each.
• Appoint one person responsible for monitoring the mailbox every day, even if the team is large.
• Agree on the rules: how quickly you reply, who takes a topic and how you mark one as completed.
• Use two-step sign-in on every employee's account, since access to the shared mailbox is obtained through their accounts.
• When an employee leaves, review which shared addresses they had access to and remove it.
• Periodically check the mailbox size, especially in Microsoft 365, where there is a 50 GB limit.

A shared address is a small change, but it clearly improves the reply speed for the customer and the peace of mind for the team. If you want such addresses to be set up properly in Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, the Appy.ge team, as a Georgian IT company, will help you with this.

Sources:
• Create a shared mailbox - Microsoft 365 admin - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/email/create-a-shared-mailbox?view=o365-worldwide
• Convert a user mailbox to a shared mailbox - Microsoft 365 admin - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/email/convert-user-mailbox-to-shared-mailbox?view=o365-worldwide
• Exchange Online limits - Service Descriptions - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/exchange-online-service-description/exchange-online-limits
• About shared mailboxes - Microsoft 365 admin - https://learn.microsoft.com/bg-bg/microsoft-365/admin/email/about-shared-mailboxes?view=o365-worldwide
• Collaborate with colleagues - Google Workspace Learning Center - https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/9259857?hl=en