How to add an email alias to an O365 group?

Question

How to add an email alias to an O365 group?

Anonymous

I need to add alias email addresses to some O365 Groups. This issue has already been suggested to the O365 development team as a new feature. Reportedly it is already possible to add alias email addresses to an O365 Group using Exchange Online PowerShell.

The directions are suppose to be located in this MS technet link:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt238274(v=exchg.160).aspx

(1) You can see where "alias" is mentioned in the parameters.

As it states, the Alias parameter specifies the Exchange alias (also known as the mail nickname) for the Office 365 Group. This value identifies the recipient as a mail-enabled object, and shouldn't be confused with multiple email addresses for the same recipient (also known as proxy addresses). A recipient can have only one Alias value.

Based on that last statement, I believe the O365 group must use some internal standard to create such an ID. An inspection of a test O365 group looks something like "******@Domain.onmicrosoft.com".

Obviously with only one alias value allowed, and already set automatically during Group creation, that doesn't help.

(2) Later the "EmailAddresses" parameter is mentioned. The plural use of the word gave me some hope.

As stated via the link, the EmailAddresses parameter specifies ALL the email addresses (proxy addresses) for the recipient, including the primary SMTP address. However, you can use this parameter to configure other proxy addresses for the recipient. The syntax includes the ability to add multiple smtp email addresses.

Based on those details it looks like I could add alias email addresses to an O365 Group using Exchange Online PowerShell!

So (finally), my question is how do you use Exchange Online PowerShell to give such commands to an O365 Group? The link obviously states a command, but the examples don't really give all the details... the recipe... or instructions.

I have googled, and search, and read, but using PowerShell in such a way is totally foreign to me. For myself, and others who need to complete this very common task, would someone please explain in detail how to execute this command?

Thanks ahead of time for your time and assistance!

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5 additional answers

Answer 1

Hi William,

Please follow the instructions to achieve your requirements:

1 . Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell. Please refer to this link: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj984289(v=exchg.160).aspx

2 . Use this cmdlet to add alias for groups: Set-UnifiedGroup –IdentityGroup******@domain.com –EmailAddresses @{Add="******@domain.com"}

Then you can use this cmdlet to check whether you have add it successfully: Get-UnifiedGroup –Identity ******@domain.com | FL EmailAddresses

If you have any questions while using powershell, please feel free to contact us.

Best regards,

Rick

Answer 2

Anonymous

Hi William,

Thanks for your sharing. We are pleased to help you resolve problems. If you have any other questions, please create a new thread for further assistance.

Best regards,

Rick

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Answer 3

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Answer 4

Rick,

Thank you. Yes, this finally worked.

As I stated in the question, I did find this information, but something was not working.

Your information confirmed I was on the correct trail, so I pressed ahead.

The issue that was preventing me to work with Exchange Online PowerShell was multi-factor authentication (MFA).

Following best practices, we use MFA. However, PowerShell doesn't work with MFA unless additional software is downloaded and applied. I couldn't get that to work, despite the download.

My solution was to create a separate Administrator account without MFA.

At first I was concerned this "Powershell Admin" would need another license to work with Exchange. Apparently, for CLI/Powershell the admin account can be unlicensed and work.

Once that "Powershell Admin" account was made, your directions worked.

A couple of important notes based on my experience.

(1) make sure to use "Remove-PSSession $Session" to close the session when finished.

(2) make sure to use "Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned" with "NO" at the end to put the security back into place.

(3) make sure to disable login for the "Powershell Admin" when not in use, since it should only be used for Powershell tasks and cannot (for us) have MFA.

(4) Exchange seems to change the incoming address for such alias addresses. We had hoped to see the email address the sender used, but Exchange converts and displays the Group's email address--not the email address the sender used. This is really annoying and we are trying to find a way to disable that "feature".(1)

Thanks again for your time for your time and assistance!

1--apparently this same conversion is automatically done for shared mailboxes as well. I can't understand why it's trying to be so "helpful".

Answer 5

Anonymous

Hi William,

If you still have any question about it, please feel free to tell us.

Thanks,

Carlos

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How to add an email alias to an O365 group?

5 additional answers