Exercise - Configure Relecloud shared mailboxes and delegate access

  • 12 minutes

Relecloud's customer success team escalates issues from a shared inbox that just crossed 50 GB, and every reply needs to look like it came from "Customer Success," not an individual rep. You've just learned the shared-mailbox sizing rule and the Send As vs. Full Access vs. Send on Behalf distinctions—now apply both yourself.

Important

Prerequisites for this exercise:

  • Access to a Microsoft 365 E5 (or E7/Frontier Suite) tenant with Exchange Online admin permissions.
  • Exchange Online PowerShell or Microsoft Graph PowerShell access for the licensing step.
  • A test user mailbox in your tenant that you can convert (or simulate) as the "Customer Success" escalations mailbox, and a second user account to receive Send As permission.

If your lab tenant doesn't include an Exchange Online Plan 2 license to spare, complete Task 1 and Task 3, then read through Task 2 to see where the licensing decision lives in the flow.

Task 1: Configure a common mailbox property

  1. Sign in to the Exchange admin center at admin.exchange.microsoft.com with your Exchange Online admin account.
  2. Select Recipients > Mailboxes, then select the user mailbox you'll turn into "Customer Success."
  3. On the mailbox's flyout, select Manage email address types, then add a proxy address such as customersuccess@<your-domain> and select Save.
  4. Confirm the new proxy address appears in the mailbox's Email addresses list. This is the address delegates will send as in Task 3.

Task 2: Convert the mailbox to shared and license it correctly

  1. Back on the mailbox's flyout, select Others > Convert to shared mailbox, then confirm the conversion.
  2. Wait for the confirmation banner. The mailbox now appears under Recipients > Mailboxes with Shared as its type.
  3. Because this mailbox has more than 50 GB of data, it needs an Exchange Online Plan 2 license to keep working. Open the Microsoft 365 admin center at admin.microsoft.com, go to Users > Active users, and select the account that backs the shared mailbox.
  4. Select Licenses and apps, assign a license that includes Exchange Online (Plan 2), and select Save changes.
  5. Confirm: without this license, the shared mailbox would stop receiving mail once it stayed over 50 GB—the license, not the shared-mailbox conversion, is what raises the storage ceiling.

Task 3: Assign Send As to the delegates

  1. Return to Recipients > Mailboxes in the Exchange admin center and select the shared mailbox.
  2. On the flyout, select Delegation > Send As, then select Edit.
  3. Add the delegate account you set aside in the prerequisites, and select Save.
  4. Sign in as the delegate, open Outlook on the web, and start a new message. In the From field, select the shared mailbox's proxy address and send a test message.
  5. Confirm: the recipient sees the message as Customer Success, with no "on behalf of" line—that's the difference between Send As and Send on Behalf you just learned in Unit 3.

You've now sized, converted, licensed, and delegated a shared mailbox exactly the way Relecloud's customer success team needs it.