Distribution groups activity

Question

Hi,

I've seen this post from Cogmotive (https://www.cogmotive.com/blog/office-365-reports/list-all-inactive-distribution-groups-in-office-365), where they tell about a report they created to show distribution groups activity.

Since they use PowerShell commands to create personalized reports that are not available to Exchange Online users inside the administrative portal, I wanted to know which PowerShell cmdlets let us find out that information from Distribution Groups:

• Inbound mail
• Outbound mail

Answer 1

Hi Vandrey,

I do understand it is not that convenient for the message trace viewing the DG's activity comparing with the PowerShell cmdlet. However, Office 365 online side has no such a cmdlet, which has been told by our engineer.

Given the situation, we'd like to invite you submit feedback to our related team via https://office365.uservoice.com/forums/273494-outlook-and-calendar. Customers' constructive ideas will help better our products and services. Your understanding is highly valued.

Regards,

Alan

Answer 2

Hi Vandrey Trindade,

Upon research and consulting, there are no such PowerShell cmdlets that can help you find out the email traffic information about distribution groups. Thanks for your understanding.

Moreover, you may consider using message trace in Exchange Admin Center and set the distribution group either as sender or recipient based on your scenario to get the detailed mail traffic report as a workaround. For your reference:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-SG/library/jj200712%28v=exchg.150%29.aspx

Thanks,

Sam

Answer 3

Alan Wu,

I've already submited a feedback =]

I'm using the Get-MessageTrace cmdlet to check the last 7 days activity of the DG for now.

Thanks!

Answer 4

Sam,

Thanks for replying.

I used the message trace to check on two groups for a test.

Unfortunately this is, by far, the worst thing to try to get statistics from a distribution group.

It takes hours to generate and you can only get information of the three past months.

In my case, my organization has more than 40 DLs...

There is a place where we can suggest cmdlets?