M365 converting former employee to shared account

[Velvis]

Has anyone run into the issue after converting an email account to shared when any employee leaves it completely gums up Outlook for the person its been shared to?

This has happened twice with two different shared mailboxes. Basically once the account is converted the person who is given access their Outlook just constantly tries to update folders causing Outlook to hang on/off and basically become unusable until I remove access to the shared account.

 

[Sky-Knight]

It's not the shared mailbox, it's the local Outlook profile. They just need flushed every so often, and I find typically it's when I remove the shared mailbox that it crops up.

It happens less frequently with current Outlook versions than in the past, but it does still happen.

Another rub here is that Outlook itself is limited to a 50gb message store. This is INCLUSIVE of all other mail. So for busy people, you often have to manually adjust Outlook so that it keeps less than the default duration of mail, which is 1 year. One of my users is down to 3 months.

 

[HCHTech]

I generally have this whole process on a timeline. After running through the "exit" checklist for anyone that leaves (changing passwords, removing remote capabilities, etc.) I share the existing mailbox with the designated people. Then, 30 days later, I email those folks asking if they still need access before I convert it to shared mailbox. This usually pares down the access list. Then, I unshare everyone from the existing mailbox. Then, the next day (which gives Outlook time to adjust the profile to remove them), I do the conversion to shared mailbox, and then re-share whoever still needs access. Don't forget to add "send as" permissions so that the people that will have access can forward individual emails to someone else for handling. Finally in 6 months, I communicate again to see if we can dump the account altogether.

This takes longer, of course, but seems to keep Outlook happy - PLUS, the extra communication usually results in LESS sharing, which reduces maintenance long term. Also, having a checklist means you don't end up with orphaned users for months or years longer than needed. Works for me.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Oh goodness that's complicated, if a customer emails that an employee is terminated I do it all right then.

Sign in blocked, onedrive contents copied into a dedicated Terminated Employee's Team, Removed from GAL, converted to shared mailbox. If someone needs the email, they get added to the shared mailbox.

After that the shared mailbox can just sit there forever for all I care, it costs nothing. But I do get clients asking for removal from Outlook after a time. So I go zap them. Once a year, I'll sort the list of terminated employees in the team and zap any mailboxes over a year old.

Besides I need that license to be free NOW. Though I suppose with everyone moving to paying annually come March that won't matter as much.

 

[HCHTech]

Isn't there something about folks not being able to forward messages from that box if the ee is no longer in the GAL? Maybe that's a side-effect of my "long way" of handling this...

 

[Sky-Knight]

Isn't there something about folks not being able to forward messages from that box if the ee is no longer in the GAL? Maybe that's a side-effect of my "long way" of handling this...

No, I forward from shared mailboxes all the time. There are some discovery issues in a few places that can get wonky if the mailbox is hidden from the GAL, but I haven't run into them in a very long time, or actually... at all on a shared mailbox. So I'm not really sure that's a thing anymore, It once was certainly.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Oh goodness that's complicated, if a customer emails that an employee is terminated I do it all right then.

Sign in blocked, onedrive contents copied into a dedicated Terminated Employee's Team, Removed from GAL, converted to shared mailbox. If someone needs the email, they get added to the shared mailbox.

After that the shared mailbox can just sit there forever for all I care, it costs nothing. But I do get clients asking for removal from Outlook after a time. So I go zap them. Once a year, I'll sort the list of terminated employees in the team and zap any mailboxes over a year old.

Besides I need that license to be free NOW. Though I suppose with everyone moving to paying annually come March that won't matter as much.

My process also!