outlook add-in for shared mailbox

@jyounker18 yeah I figured that out after doing a little bit more research. This is a Microsoft dilemma… Would be nice though! 

@sean21  - One of our clients came up with the following workaround that you might want to try.

if you right click on the plugin when in the primary mailbox you get the option to Add to Quick Access Toolbar which adds the plugin option to the top-left menu.  

This can then be used even when focused on the Shared Mailboxes.

@Colin MacMillan thanks for sharing. I’ll have to test that out as well. Looks like a pretty creative solution! 

@sean21  - One of our clients came up with the following workaround that you might want to try.

if you right click on the plugin when in the primary mailbox you get the option to Add to Quick Access Toolbar which adds the plugin option to the top-left menu.  

This can then be used even when focused on the Shared Mailboxes.

 

This was so helpful. Thank you!

You can see the outlook plug in using the workaround. however none of the functionality works ! cannot create a contact, cant log an activity. Did anyone figure out how to get it to actually work? 

Update! it works SOME of the time. when it works its great! But sometimes it does not pick up on the email contents. 

I have created a Product Idea for this feature here: 

Upvoting ideas will help with exposure. Adding details of a use case scenario, and how it is envisioned for the product to function is also useful when our team is reviewing these ideas.

Please feel free to submit a support case to request this feature. This will also help us gauge demand.

Has anyone that has run into this tried configuring the Shared mailbox as a full licensed mailbox, and then adding the plugin (via OWA) to that licensed user?  I’m frustrated that anyone in this decade would design an Outlook plugin that wouldn’t recognize the benefit of Shared Mailboxes (we are hoping to use it to Create AP Documents, which is an included feature), but I’m not opposed to licensing our AP mailbox if it helps.

​@lairdtim If the mailbox is licensed, it is no longer a Shared Mailbox by Microsoft’s definition: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/collaboration/shared-mailboxes/shared-mailboxes. The Outlook add-in should work with any regular licensed mailbox.

Agreed.  But that doesn’t mean it’ll work.  I’m worried that it will only show up in Outlook for the primary mailbox (the end user), even if the AP mailbox is licensed and the end user has full access to it within Outlook.

​@lairdtim Thanks for clarifying. My understanding is that it is desired to use the Outlook add-in with multiple mailboxes concurrently, from the same user and mail client. I haven’t seen that setup and I don’t believe we have documentation for it, so it would definitely need to be tested. Interesting idea If you do wind up testing it, please let us know the results.

Hello! I am with the CRM Product team.  Although your message is a bit older, I am hopeful that you can provide some details to me on the behaviors you were seeing with this workaround in place.  Feel free to message me directly - I am gathering information so that we can make an informed decision around this ask.  

Best, 

Tara

Since this topic is coming back up, I figured I’d share our workaround.  It’s not pretty, but it works.

For starters, we’re using the plugin primarily for AP Automation.  Our AP Invoices come into a specific shared mailbox, and we were unable to do anything with the data in this mailbox with the Plugin.

We did three things.  None are ideal, but it does work and the AP team is happy that we have removed a lot of manual entry.

• Converted the shared mailbox into a licensed mailbox.  So this is costing us extra each month.
• Shared the password for this licensed mailbox with our AP Clerks, and they open Outlook Web Access in a private browsing window and sign into the invoice mailbox directly.
• We setup the email address of the invoice mailbox as an Acumatica user with the AP Clerk role, so that the automation could create entries in the ERP.