Mail flow permissions in Exchange Server

The permissions required to perform tasks related to mail flow vary depending on the procedure being performed or the cmdlet you want to run. For more information about transport features, see Mail flow and the transport pipeline.

This topic lists the permissions required to manage the mail flow features in Exchange Server 2016 and Exchange Server 2019. For information about how Microsoft 365 or Office 365 permissions relate to Exchange permissions, see About admin roles.

To find out what permissions you need to perform the procedure or run the cmdlet, do the following:

1. In the table below, find the feature that is most related to the procedure you want to perform or the cmdlet you want to run.

2. Next, look at the permissions required for the feature. You must be assigned one of those role groups, an equivalent custom role group, or an equivalent management role. You can also click a role group to see its management roles. If a feature lists more than one role group, you need to be assigned to only one of the role groups to use the feature. For more information about role groups and management roles, see Understanding Role Based Access Control.

3. Now, run the Get-ManagementRoleAssignment cmdlet to look at the role groups or management roles assigned to you to see if you have the permissions that are necessary to manage the feature.

   Note

   You must be assigned the Role Management management role to run the Get-ManagementRoleAssignment cmdlet. If you don't have permissions to run the Get-ManagementRoleAssignment cmdlet, ask your Exchange administrator to retrieve the role groups or management roles assigned to you.

If you want to delegate the ability to manage a feature to another user, see Delegate role assignments.

Note

Some features that you want to manage might exist on Edge Transport servers. To manage features on Edge Transport servers, you need to become a member of the Local Administrators group on the Edge Transport server you want to manage. Edge Transport servers don't use Role Based Access Control (RBAC). Features that can be managed on Edge Transport servers have Edge Transport Local Administrator in the "Permissions required" column in the table below.

Note

Some features may require that you have local administrator permissions on the server you want to manage. To manage these features, you must be a member of the Local Administrators group on that server.

Mail flow permissions

You can use the features in the following tables to configure mail flow settings in the Front End Transport, Mailbox Transport, and Transport services on Mailbox servers, and on Edge Transport servers. The permissions that are required to configure each feature are listed.

Users who are assigned the View Only Management role group can view the configuration of the features shown in the following table. For more information, see View Only Organization Management.

Mailbox servers

Feature	Permissions required
Accepted domains	Organization Management
Active Directory site and site link management	Organization Management
Antispam features	Organization Management Hygiene Management
Antispam updates	Organization Management Hygiene Management
Certificate management	Organization Management
Delivery Agent connectors	Organization Management Server Management
DSNs	Organization Management
EdgeSync	Organization Management
Foreign connectors	Organization Management
Front End Transport service	Organization Management Server Management Hygiene Management
Journaling	Organization Management Records Management
Mailbox access	Organization Management
Mailbox junk email configuration	Organization Management Records Management Recipient Management Help Desk
Mailbox Transport service	Organization Management Server Management Hygiene Management
MailTips	Organization Management
Message classifications	Organization Management Records Management
Message tracking	Organization Management Records Management Recipient Management
Moderated transport	Organization Management Recipient Management
Queues	Organization Management Server Management
Receive connectors	Organization Management Server Management Hygiene Management
Remote domains	Organization Management
SafeList aggregation	Organization Management Records Management
Send connectors	Organization Management
Shadow redundancy	Organization Management
Testing mail flow	Organization Management Server Management
Testing mail flow rule (also known as transport rule) processing	Organization Management
Transport agents	Organization Management Records Management
Transport configuration	Organization Management
Transport logs	Organization Management Server Management
Mail flow rules (also known as transport rules)	Organization Management Records Management
Transport service	Organization Management Server Management Hygiene Management
X.400 domains	Organization Management

Edge Transport servers

Feature	Permissions required
Accepted domains - Edge Transport	Edge Transport server local administrator
Address Rewriting - Edge Transport	Edge Transport server local administrator
Edge Transport server	Edge Transport server local administrator
EdgeSync - Edge Transport	Edge Transport server local administrator
Queues - Edge Transport	Edge Transport server local administrator
Receive connectors - Edge Transport	Edge Transport server local administrator
Send connectors - Edge Transport	Edge Transport server local administrator
Transport configuration - Edge Transport	Edge Transport server local administrator
Transport logs - Edge Transport	Edge Transport server local administrator
Mail flow rules (also known as transport rules) - Edge Transport	Edge Transport server local administrator