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Sunday, June 23, 2019

Exchange - Inbox Rule To Move Email To Folder Sent To Alias

Here's a scenario I've seen quite often:

You have a Shared Mailbox called Human Resources (hr@exchangeitup.com), and you've added an alias of training@exchangeitup.com.

One of the user's with Full Access to the HR Mailbox, wants to create an inbox rule that will move messages sent to the training address to a Training folder - but this won't work.


When messages are sent to an alias, Exchange Directory Services will "translate" the alias as the primary email address; Training = Human Resources, and you can see it action by typing the address in the "To" field in Outlook and watch it change to the primary name. Therefore, inbox rules won't work for sorting/moving those emails to the alias.

In order to get around that behavior, we'll need to create a Mail Contact and a Transport Rule:

1. Remove the alias from the Shared Mailbox by running the following cmdlet in the Exchange Management Shell (EMS):

Set-Mailbox "Human Resources" -EmailAddresses @{remove="training@exchangeitup.com"}

Give it a few for Exchange/AD to update.

2. Create a Mail Contact for "Training" by running the following cmdlet:

New-MailContact -Name "Training" -ExternalEmailAddress training@exchangeitup.com -OrganizationalUnit “Contacts” 

**Note** This is re-using the secondary email address taken away from shared mailbox in step 1. Change the Name, External Email Address, OU match your environment.

3. Create a Transport Rule to redirect all messages sent to the Training Contact over to the HR Shared Mailbox:

 In the Exchange Admin Center (EAC), navigate to mail flow > rules.

Create a new Rule with the following settings:

Name: Training Forward

*Apply this rule if...
The recipient is..."Training"

*Do the following...
Redirect the message to..."Human Resources"


Or  you can use the EMS to run the cmdlet:

New-TransportRule, parameters -SentTo ("Training") -RedirectMessageTo ("Human Resources") -Name "Training Forward" -StopRuleProcessing "False" -Mode "Enforce" -Comments "" -RuleErrorAction "Ignore" -SenderAddressLocation "Header"

4. Create an inbox rule for the HR Shared Mailbox to move emails sent to the Training Contact to another folder in the Shared Mailbox:

In OWA, click your person icon in the upper-right corner, then select Open Another Mailbox.

Search for and open the Shared Mailbox (Human Resources in this example).

Then click the Settings Gear in the upper-right and go to Options > Inbox and sweep rules > create a rule using the following settings

It was sent to..."Training"
Do all of the following:
Move the message to folder..."Training Folder"


Now test it out! Send a message to training@exchangeitup.com and verify that the message was moved directly to the Training Folder.

3 comments:

  1. Awesome! Happen to know if/how I can reply from that mail contact email address?

    ReplyDelete
  2. we had the same problem - a shared mailbox with rules to move emails to specific subfolders based on an email alias. We simply made each alias into a shared mailbox, took all the aliases off the master shared mailbox, and then forwarded all the emails from each alias shared mailbox to the master shared mailbox, and then the rules on that master mailbox would work pushing the distinct emails to certain subfolders. We figure since shared mailboxes don't cost us a license (up to 50Gb) it was ok to do it this way.

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    Replies
    1. i should've also mentioned that the emails were receive-only for these aliases, so didn't have to worry about sending out. Also, we only published the master shared mailbox to everyone's Outlook so only one extra mailbox showed up, not all 5.

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