Microsoft 365 additional configurations

Microsoft 365 is a world itself, even some companies’ IT departments have a Team fully dedicated to its configuration and maintenance, in our case we will continue with its configuration and show the additional features that this suite can offer to us.

Microsoft 365 Office Apps

Our amazing Team now needs office apps to perform their work tasks (word, excel, and Outlook). Since we assigned Microsoft 365 Business Standard to each user, we have access to Desktop Office apps, let’s take a look:

Let’s login with Charles on BBM-WS01, and open the Executives shared drive, as we can see there are two documents: a Word document called Business Plan and an Excel spreadsheet called Data

In the last episode, we logged the users in the Office 365 Apps therefore Charles is already logged in, once we open each file we can confirm Word and Excel are fully functional and activated:

NOTE:

Sometimes we can see the local account as an option on any of the Office 365 Apps, we can sign it out or dismiss it.

Shared Mailboxes

We have a new requirement, we need a generic mailbox for Executives, IT, and HR just called as its department, those need to be managed by the Department Manager and Staff, we may think about creating another mailbox, assigning a license, providing each member the password so they can log in and work, but there is a better option and it’s called Shared Mailboxes, this Microsoft 365 type of mailbox will work without any license and we can provide access to any licensed user so they can open it and send emails from there.

Let’s see how it works:

Navigate to Exchange Admin Center \> Mailboxes > Add a Shared mailbox

For this case let’s create the following:

Display name: IT

Email address: it@beyondbaremetal.com

Alias: IThelp (This is used as a secondary email address)

We can see the details and select Delegation:

There are 2 types of Permissions:

Send As:

The Send as permission allows the delegate to send an email from this mailbox. The message will appear to have been sent from this mailbox owner.

In our case, we will add only karl@beyondbaremetal.com (who is the IT Manager)

Read and manage (Full Access):

The Full Access permission allows a delegate to open this mailbox and behave as the mailbox owner.

In our case, we will add karl@beyondbaremetal.com (IT Manager) and matt@beyondbaremetal.com (IT Staff)

NOTE: This will also make the mailbox appear on the user’s Outlook app (we will be verifying this shortly).

Rinse and repeat for HR and Executives:

We will use the same convention as before, the Manager will have Send As and Full Permission, and the Staff will only have Full Permission

HR:

Executives:

In this case, we only have Charles@beyondbaremetal.com (CEO)

Let’s test the Shared Mailbox for Executives now:

We can log in on BBM-WS01 as Charles and open the Outlook app:

As we notice, we can see now the Executives Shared mailbox on the left pane:

Fully functional:

We can reply directly from it or charles@beyondbaremetal.com:

And sent successfully!

We can see we received it as Executives:

Another test:

Charles came in the morning and is having Computer issues so he needs to email IT (using Outlook Web):

Charles will email it@beyondbaremetal.com:

Karl will see he has a new email on IT inbox:

Karl replies that he will assist soon:

Charles receives the response from IT:

Final test with HR:

Charles sends an email to hr@beyondbaremetal.com asking for staff information:

Soo is working on a computer that doesn’t have the Outlook Desktop app, he is logged in via Outlook Web:

To open the HR Shared Mailbox Soo needs to perform an extra step:

Soo sees Charles’ email:

And tries to reply:

Soo can’t reply because the user only has Full Permissions and not Send As

Teddy (HR manager with Send as permissions) sees it too and can reply:

Charles receives it:

Distribution List

Now we face a new challenge. The HR department is in the process of attracting and hiring talent, and they are asking if there is a way to have those emails go directly to their mailboxes instead of having a separate mailbox.

The solution: Distribution Lists, we will set up a new email: careers@beyondbaremetal.com, and add Teddy (HR Manager) and Soo (HR Staff) as members so they both will receive any emails sent there.

Let’s navigate to: Exchange Admin Center > Teams & Groups > Active teams & groups > Distribution list > Add a distribution list

Set name as Careers:

Assign owners: In this case, it will be karl@beyondbaremetal.com (IT Manager)

Add Members: Teddy (HR Manager) and Soo (HR Staff)

Set Group Email address and check: Allow people outside of my organization to send emails to this distribution group.

Distribution list created:

Checking the details:

Testing:

Soo checks his mailbox and we can see we got a new email sent to careers@beyondbaremetal.com:

Working!

NOTE: For Distribution Lists, any member can reply and it will show as their mailbox:

Email Forwarding

Another challenge we have is, that Matt (IT Staff) is still on training so Karl (IT Manager) wants to monitor all emails he gets.

The solution: Email forwarding, we can forward all emails received in a mailbox to another mailbox.

Let’s navigate to Exchange Admin Center > Recipients > Mailboxes > Select Matt Sam > Email forwarding

Let’s set the options and the following:

Forward all emails sent to this mailbox: On

Forwarding address: Forward to an internal email address, karl@beyondbaremetal.com

Deliver message to both forwarding address and mailbox: Check, this option is IMPORTANT otherwise all emails will be going to the forwarding address and not the mailbox itself.

Testing:

Soo will email matt@beyondbaremetal.com

Matt receives it:

Karl also receives it, notice it says to Matt Sam:

Transport Rules / Mail Flow Rules:

Another good feature that can be handy for taking action on the organization's email flow is Transport Rules / Mail Flow Rules.

Let’s set up one set banner to an external email, alerting the user and advising cautiousness.

Let’s navigate to Exchange Admin Center > Mail Flow > Rules > Create a new rule:

For the options let’s set:

• Name: ExternalEmailBanner

• Apply this rule if: The sender is located ‘NotInOrganization’

• Do the following: Apply a disclaimer to the message, prepend a disclaimer: ‘[EXTERNAL EMAIL] Use caution with links and attachments’ and fall back to action ‘Wrap’ if the disclaimer can’t be inserted.

Set the rest as default

Transport rule created:

Testing:

Charles got an external email and we can see the banner is successfully inserted and showing:

Conclusion

This post explored advanced Microsoft 365 collaboration features, demonstrating how organizations can effectively manage communication infrastructure. We covered critical capabilities like shared mailboxes, distribution lists, and email forwarding, showcasing practical solutions for departmental communication needs and challenges. The Transport Rules feature further enhances email security by adding external email banners, illustrating Microsoft 365's robust configuration options for modern enterprise communication.

The next steps will involve expanding on Microsoft 365 collaboration features such as Groups, Teams, and Sharepoint Sites.

Stay tuned for more content.

Thanks for reading!

Link to the series 👉 https://beyondbaremetal.hashnode.dev/series/beyond-bare-metal-setup