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My management wants me to add non-employee email addresses, such as parent emails and frequent contact suppliers, to our Exchange Online Global Address List (GAL).
What is the best practice for this and how can I ensure it is secure?
That's what Mail contacts are for: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/recipients-in-exchange-online/manage-mail-contacts
Security-wise, there's nothing to be concerned about here, you are simply creating a "placeholder" for a given address. It's not an actual user, it cannot be used to access any resources or expose company data.
Thank you but I am getting error message and I need to know what to write in the Alias section please? and what is the point of having Alias email?
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Hi @IT,
The Alias parameter specifies the Exchange alias (also known as the mail nickname) for the recipient, which cannot contain blanks and should be unique in your tenant.
In this case you can use for example, John_Mark_Parents.
If you still get an error message when creating the contact, please connect to Exchange Online Powershell as an Exchange admin and run cmdlet to create instead:
New-MailContact -Name "Parents of John Mark" -FirstName John -LastName Mark -alias John_Mark_Parents -ExternalEmailAddress dave@hotmail.com
Thank you so much for your help.
You forgot to add the double quotation to the email address otherwise it will give you error.
Example from Microsoft page:
New-MailContact -Name "Chris Ashton" -ExternalEmailAddress "chris@tailspintoys.com"
Thanks for the update.
Has the issue been resolved?
If yes, please accept the helpful reply as the answer to the question to help other community members.
Thanks for your understanding.
If you need further help, please feel free to post back.