Limitations of Guest users in our organisation

Question

Limitations of Guest users in our organisation

Steve Rickard 21

We have 2 issues when trying to incorporate Guest users in our organisation.

I have a Dynamic Distribution list set up to send a mail to all our organisations contacts who have the same value in the "Department" field. This works fine for all MailContact types, but it does not include Contacts whom I have created as Guest users who have the same value in the Department field under Job Info.
We have found it is not possible to select a Guest user when trying to include them in the list of address in the Approved list under Delivery Management in a standard Distribution List.

We would appreciate any advice regarding this. We are a voluntary organisation with no paid IT staff.

Regards
Steve Rickard
for Lee on Solent Sailing Club

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Answer 1

Yuki Sun-MSFT 41,376 Moderator

Hi @Steve Rickard ,

For the first issue, as you mentioned, the dynamic distribution list works fine for all MailContact types but doesn't work for guest users. While per my test, the dynamic 365 groups can include the guest users but doesn't include mail contacts. Given this situation, I'd suggest considering creating one Dynamic distribution list as you have already done, and then create one dynamic 365 group based on the same rule (have the same value in the "Department" field). So when you need to send messages, you can add both the dynamic distribution list and the dynamic 365 group into the recipients field.

As regards to the second issue, as far as I know, this is by design so you may have to add the guest user as a mail contact beforehand if you need to include them in the Approved list under Delivery Management of a distribution list.

With the above being said, I just tried submitting this via the dedicated feedback portal for Exchange Online. I'll leave the link below so that you or others who see this thread can also add vote or comment there:
https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/12107cc1-7c7f-ed11-a81b-6045bdaf6a9e

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Steve Rickard 21 Reputation points

2022-12-19T11:23:27.887+00:00

Hi
Thank you for your reply and for taking the time to test out a possible work around, I will have a look at that, although I will need to see if I can nest the groups so our users only have 1 email address to remember.
For the second part, I have already tried having both a MailContact and a Guest with the same email address, which can be done. However when adding the MailContact to the approved list Exchange throws up an error "There are multiple recipients matching the identity "*************@Stuff .com". Please specify a unique value." Any further ideas would be appreciated.
Thank you for submitting the feedback to the Exchange Portal. Lets hope we get some votes!
Steve
Steve Rickard 21 Reputation points

2022-12-19T11:43:08.49+00:00

Hi - I've just looked at creating a Dynamic 365 Group but this feature requires an Azure AD Premium P1 license or Intune for Education for each unique user that is a member of one or more dynamic groups. This would increase our costs unnecessarily as we would need a licence for each Guest user, and as a small club we have to watch our overheads. But thank your for looking into this.
Steve
Yuki Sun-MSFT 41,376 Reputation points Moderator

2022-12-20T06:48:58.21+00:00
Hi @Steve Rickard ,

However when adding the MailContact to the approved list Exchange throws up an error "There are multiple recipients matching the identity...

Thanks for bring this out. I tested further and it turns out indeed it's not feasible to have a guest user set as a MailContact at the same time for filling in the sender list under delivery management. Therefore, you may have to delete the guest user and then readd it as a mail contact.

If for some reasons it's not acceptable for you to delete the guest user, another workaround I can think of is trying to create a mail flow rule to block all mails sent to the distribution group except those sent from the particular external email addresses .

Make sure the distribution list is set to "Allow messages from people inside and outside my organization".

In Exchange Online Admin Center, go to Mail Flow > Rules > Add a rule > Create a new rule.

Specify a name for the rule, set the condition, action and exception of the rule as follows:
Steve Rickard 21 Reputation points

2022-12-20T10:40:45.313+00:00

Thank you
But your second screen shot is not visible (272328-2.png)!
Could you retry , or email it to xxxx?
Steve
Yuki Sun-MSFT 41,376 Reputation points Moderator

2022-12-21T01:15:55.023+00:00

Hi @Steve Rickard ,

Sorry for the broken image. I've just tried re uploading it again and would you try checking the post above again and see if it can be seen properly from your side?

By the way, considering that it's a public forum, I've hided your email address for privacy concern.

Answer 2

Andy David - MVP 157.8K MVP Volunteer Moderator

You could use a 365 group:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/adding-guests-to-microsoft-365-groups-bfc7a840-868f-4fd6-a390-f347bf51aff6

and it could be dynamic:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/enterprise-users/groups-dynamic-membership

Steve Rickard 21 Reputation points

2022-12-18T13:39:24.943+00:00

Hi Andy, thank you for your answer.
We are a small sailing club and only have 17 licences, and our Club Officers and some other functions have Mail Boxes, and the remaining committee members are guests and are in the 365 groups for the committees. All of the 500 or so club members are just Contacts, so I would have to recreate all of them as Guests, and many of them would not know how or understand why they need to do that. The dynamic groups for email distribution (such as "what's on" emails) are easy to maintain as I just add the contact and make sure the department field is correctly populated.
I don't think adding all Members as Guests would work, unless I can do that with having to invite them. Is that possible?
Steve

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Limitations of Guest users in our organisation

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