Creating and using a shared account

Last updated 15th June 2021

Objective

A shared account is a mailbox shared between several Exchange accounts and can only be accessed through them. A shared account does not have a password. It is therefore necessary to delegate its access to one or more Exchange accounts of the same service.
Shared accounts can be accessed via delegation from OWA (Exchange webmail) or via Outlook email software.

This guide explains how to create and manage a shared account on your Exchange platform.

Requirements

• access to the OVHcloud Control Panel
• an OVHcloud Exchange solution

Instructions

Adding a shared account

Log in to the OVHcloud Control Panel. Go to the Web Cloud section and select your service under Microsoft, then Exchange.

Select the Shared accounts tab in the horizontal menu and click on Add a shared account.

Fill in the requested fields:

Field	Description
Email account	Choose the name of your shared account. This must not be an existing email address.
Quota	Enter the storage quota you want for your shared account. The maximum quota is 10 GB for all of your shared accounts.
Display name	The display name you want to appear when sending from your shared account.
Hide the address in the directory	By hiding the address in the directory you can ensure that the shared account is not visible in the address list of your Exchange service.

Click Next to proceed to the summary. Complete the operation by clicking on Confirm.

Managing the delegation of a shared account

Once you have created your shared account, you will need to grant access permissions to one or more accounts of the Exchange service.

A shared account cannot be accessed directly because it does not have a password. It cannot be configured directly in an Outlook client, or accessed via webmail.

You will need to set up a delegation between an Exchange account and the shared account.

In the Shared accounts tab of your Exchange service, click on the ... button next to the shared account, then click Manage delegations. You can then choose which accounts can access the shared account.

Choose the permissions for the selected account:

Permission	Description
"Send As" permission	Allows the selected email account to send an email as the shared email address.
"Send on Behalf" permission	Allows the selected email account to send on behalf of the shared email address.
Access permission	Allows the selected email account to view and manage the shared account from OWA or Outlook.

Then click Next and Confirm to save the changes.

In our example, we allow the accounts guide-exchange@ and test@ to access shared_test@.
The account guide-exchange@ will also have the right to send mails "as" shared_test@.
The account test@ can also send emails "on behalf of" shared_test@.

Using the account shared from OWA (webmail)

Log in to webmail with an Exchange account that has access to the shared account.
In our example, we connect with the guide-exchange@ account.

Once you have logged in, right-click on the main tree for your email address in the left-hand column. Select Add shared folder... from the context menu.

Enter the name of your shared account and click Add when it is found in the Exchange directory.

In our example, the shared account is now accessible from the guide-exchange@ account.

Using the shared account from Outlook

In the Outlook application, you will see your shared account in the left-hand column in the same way as in OWA.

Go further

Using the Outlook Web App with an Exchange account

Delegating permissions on an Exchange account

How to share calendars via OWA

Creating automatic signatures

Join our community of users on https://community.ovh.com/en/.

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