Upcoming changes to shared mailbox Sent Items folder (IT support staff)


Introduction

On June 3, 2021, the Digital Workplace will implement an improvement that modifies the way sent messages are displayed in all University of Toronto (U of T) shared mailboxes in the Outlook desktop application. While this modification will be beneficial and seamless for most users, it may cause minor email display issues for U of T users whose machines have been previously configured by their local IT divisions. 

We encourage IT support staff to review this knowledge base article carefully to understand: 

Background 

By default, sending email using auto-mapped shared mailboxes in the Outlook desktop application results in a sent message copy in the Sent Items folder of the email sender and not the shared mailbox. This means that when multiple people use a single shared mailbox account to respond to inquiries, messages sent from the shared email address cannot be viewed in one single place: the sent message is distributed to the Sent Items folder of the sender and is not collected centrally in the Sent Items folder of the shared mailbox. This configuration can sometimes confuse users who wish to verify whether an email message has already been responded to by a colleague. 

Solution 

The server-level solution the Digital Workplace team will implement on June 3 ensures that all emails sent from a shared mailbox will now appear in the Sent Items folder of the shared mailbox account. Additionally, emails sent from shared mailbox accounts will continue to appear in the Sent Items folder of the primary sender. 

Please note: this change will only impact shared mailboxes on the desktop version of Outlook. The change to Sent Items will not affect regedits applied for the Deleted Items folder.

How this change will impact shared mailbox users 

For most shared mailbox users, this change will be seamless: they will simply be able to view all items sent from a shared mailbox account in that account’s Sent Items folder in the Outlook desktop application. Additionally, users will continue to see the emails they send from a shared mailbox email address in their personal Sent Items folders. 

However, on a divisional level, some machines may already have a version of this workaround in place. In these instances, the June 3 update will create an additional rule and users with previously modified machines may see duplicates of sent emails in their shared mailbox Sent Items folders. This is the result of both the original workaround and the June 3 update being applied to the user’s machine configuration at the same time. While this will not affect the functionality of shared mailboxes, we recommend: 

  • Undoing previous divisionally implemented workarounds on, or shortly after, June 3 when possible. 
  • Informing impacted end users that even though they see duplicate copies of emails in the Sent Items folders, the emails they sent were only sent once. 
  • Informing your IT support team of the upcoming change so they can identify the issue if approached by a University of Toronto community member.  
  • Reviewing the end user and technical resources listed below. 

Resources