What is a shared mailbox?

A shared mailbox is a mailbox account that multiple users can use with a mailbox.lboro.ac.uk email domain. This allows users to read and send email, have access to a calendar and create contacts.

Shared Mailboxes cannot be created with a user part (before the @ symbol) that matches an existing one. Mailboxes will be created overnight and will automatically appear in Outlook the following day within an hour of starting Outlook.

Each Shared Mailbox has an assigned Managers group who controls which users have access to the Read-Only and Read-Write groups. Managers will need to add themselves to either group to view the mailbox content. Please visit Modifying group membership using Outlook for instructions on how to do this from the link below.

  • Read-Only group can read items within the Shared Mailbox
  • Read-Write group can read, delete, create, and send emails/calendar items/contacts and so on from the Shared Mailbox.

To add a Shared Mailbox to Outlook, assuming you have permission to do so, follow the instructions for setting up Additional Accounts from the link below. Retention Policies can be used to automatically delete email stored in mailbox folders. By default, no Retention Policy is applied except to junk e-mail and deleted items.

Microsoft - Additional accounts

Requesting a Shared Mailbox

Requests for a Shared Mailbox will be available via a self-service form which will require you to provide the following information:

  • Name of the new shared mailbox to be created
  • First person managing new shared mailbox
  • Description of what the shared mailbox is for
  • Tick if this is replacing a manually registered account
  • Email address of the account to be replaced
  • Do you still need to receive email sent to the existing email address, as receive only, to the new Shared Mailbox?
  • I have discussed this with my Ops Manager/Head of Service, and they have approved it
  • Email Address of Ops Manager/Head of Service
Shared mailbox request

Responsibilities and Duties of a shared mailbox manager

Once the Shared Mailbox is no longer required (and you're sure you've archived the important items within it somewhere else!) a manager should request deletion via the IT Service Desk. Please note there is a 28-day limit to carry out this recovery after deletion. Once this period has passed, mailboxes cannot be recovered.

  • Clear out old email regularly
  • Ensure that there are at least 2 managers
  • Handling and processing of information
  • Maintain membership of the Shared Mailbox’s associated groups
  • The Shared Mailbox service should not be used as a solution for the storage of information which you are required to retain for legal compliance
  • The following information should not be stored categories of information: Highly Confidential (NHS (medical) data, Export Control data, data covered under the Official Secrets Act)

Shared Mailbox FAQs

Managing people

To delete or add users to a group you have permission to modify:

Open the Outlook Address book

From the Home tab, in the Find group (too far right of the screen), select Address Book, or press Ctrl+Shift+B.

Select "All Groups"

Under Address Book select All Distribution Lists. This refreshes the list so that it is up-to-date.

Find and Open the group you are allowed to manage

Under Search, start typing the name of the mailbox (the part before the @mailbox.lboro.ac.uk). You will see 3 groups :

  • .Managers
  • .ReadOnly
  • .ReadWrite

Using the Modify Members instructions below :

  • If you need to give people read only access to emails/calendar entries, add them to the ReadOnly group.
  • If you need to give people full access to send/receive emails and create/update calendar entries, add them to the ReadWrite group.
  • If you need to give people access to add/remove mailbox users add them to the Managers group.

NB adding people to the Managers group does NOT automatically give them access to use the mailbox. You ALSO need to add them to the ReadWrite group if they need full access.

Modify Members

Click Modify Members button

To delete a member: Select a member and click Delete
To add a member: Under Contact Group Membership click Add. Use the address book to select one or more users and click Add

In line with the University Information Governance policies and general good email practice the following policy for the management of the Shared Mailbox service has been approved.

An automated system will scan the Shared and Role mailboxes once per month and apply the following policy:

Date mailbox last accessed or emailed: Greater than 93 days (~3 months) - Email all mailbox users informing them that mailbox access will be revoked in 31 days if is not used.

User action to prevent deletion - Access or email the mailbox

Date mailbox last accessed or emailed: Greater than 124 days (~4 months) - Revoke all mailbox access and inform all mailbox users

User action to prevent deletion - Request access to the mailbox is restored or Access or email the mailbox

Date mailbox last accessed or emailed: Greater than 334 days (~11 months) - Inform all mailbox users than it will be deleted in a month

User action to prevent deletion - Request access to the mailbox is restored or Access or email the mailbox

Date mailbox last accessed or emailed: Greater than 365 days (~12 months) - Delete mailbox and all associated groups and inform all mailbox users

User action to prevent deletion - Request recovery within 30 days of deletion

Info Governance Policies

You can create Teams meetings from a Shared Mailbox and invite other people to the meeting as you would using your own account. There are, however, issues with this. The main issue is that the organiser will be the Shared Mailbox. As you cannot login to the Shared Mailbox, you cannot manage any of the meeting settings, such as modifying presenters. This is a workaround for this issue.

The person who should be the meeting Organiser will need to create a Teams meeting in their own Mailbox and copy the body of the meeting invite into a Teams meeting that the Shared Mailbox will be sending out, replacing the original Shared Mailbox Teams Meeting body completely.

Note. If you just create a meeting invite and copy the body, when you review the Teams meeting settings it will state it is an unscheduled meeting with no assigned date/time or title.

If you want to have a meeting with the details available, you will need to create and send the Teams meeting invite, with the correct Date/Time and Title. You can do this by just adding yourself to the Required attendees field and ‘Sending’ the invite, or you could send the invite to the Shared Mailbox. You can then copy the Teams meeting information from the body into a new meeting invite created in the Shared Mailbox as above.

When you do this the person who created the Original Teams meeting invite becomes the meeting Organiser, but the meeting will actually come from the Shared Mailbox.

This can be caused by you having a second (Shared) Mailbox attached to your Outlook profile that you no longer have access to.

To resolve this, remove the additional mailbox from your Outlook profile using the Remove Shared Folder instructions below:

Access another person's mailbox (microsoft.com)

The mail merge feature in Word does not allow you to select a sending email address, therefore some set up is required to force emails to be sent from a shared mailbox.

Mail merge setup instructions