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Easy to Schedule Teams Meetings from Shared Mailboxes But…
Despite Microsoft explicitly documenting that it is a supported feature, some doubts apparently exist that it is possible to send Teams meeting requests from a shared mailbox. Let’s be blunt. It is possible to send Teams meeting requests when:
- The delegate has full access to the shared mailbox. In other words, they have full control over all folders, including the calendar.
- The delegate account has a Teams license. Alternatively (but not very common), the shared mailbox’s account has a Teams license. The shared mailbox can have other licenses (for example, to gain a 100 GB quota), but no license is needed to schedule Teams meetings. Internal meeting participants need Teams licenses to attend the meetings.
That’s it. Nothing else is required. That is, apart from the need to use Outlook (classic) for now because the new Outlook doesn’t currently support creating a Teams meeting in a shared mailbox. I don’t think this is an issue because it’s likely that those who manage shared mailboxes use Outlook classic, which Microsoft has committed to support until at least 2029. Old habits (and old software) die hard.
In addition, it doesn’t matter if the calendar uses the old (MAPI) or new (REST) sharing model. The important thing is the ability of the client to request Teams to create the space where the online meeting to occur and return an identifier (URI) for meeting participants to access the meeting.
Schedule Teams Meetings for Corporate Events
Let’s take the scenario where a company uses a shared mailbox to schedule important corporate meetings. To cover situations like personal time off, such mailboxes tend to have at least two delegates, both with full access.
To schedule a Teams meeting, the delegate opens the calendar in Outlook classic and creates a new event in the calendar. They select the option to make the event a Teams meeting and add required and optional attendees, and the start and end time. Full access to the calendar is required to create or modify events.
After Teams creates the meeting space, the shared mailbox becomes the meeting organizer and has full control over the meeting. However, because the shared mailbox is unlikely to attend the online Teams meeting when it happens, you should use Meetings Options to assign at least one co-organizer to run the meeting (Figure 1).
Apart from the meeting organizer probably not attending the event, participants for Teams meetings organized from a shared mailbox see no difference in how online meetings proceed.
The Licensing Requirement Arising from Recorded Teams Meetings
One obvious issue is that if the meeting is recorded or transcribed, the resulting MP4 file is stored in the meeting organizer’s OneDrive for Business account – the OneDrive account belonging to the shared mailbox. However, the account is unlicensed, so under the new Microsoft policy for unlicensed OneDrive for Business accounts, the account will be removed after its 365th unpaid day.
I’m not sure that every organization that uses shared mailboxes to schedule Teams meetings recognizes the looming OneDrive deletion deadline.
Use Microsoft 365 Business Basic Licenses
Microsoft’s clampdown on unlicensed OneDrive for Business account means that although it is technically possible to create and run Teams meetings from a shared mailbox without paying for any licenses, if the meetings are recorded or transcribed (as many important corporate meetings are), then a license is needed to store the recordings in OneDrive. Given that Microsoft no longer sells standalone OneDrive for Business licenses, the cheapest option is to license the accounts with Microsoft 365 Business Basic plan ($7/month list).
Microsoft 365 Business Basic includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online (and OneDrive for Business), and Teams plus some other service plans. The option is therefore to:
- Assign Microsoft 365 Business Basic licenses to shared mailboxes used to schedule Teams meetings.
- Assign Microsoft 365 Business Basic licenses and convert the shared mailboxes to regular user mailboxes. This removes the current dependency on Outlook classic, ensures that meeting recordings and transcripts are stored in a fully licensed OneDrive account, and simplifies the long-term retention, discovery, and management of meeting artifacts.
Organizations that depend heavily on recorded meetings should seriously consider whether shared mailboxes remain the right scheduling mechanism. Shared mailboxes can still organize Teams meetings without licenses, but because recordings are stored in unlicensed OneDrive accounts means creates the possibility for unexpected data loss. If recordings need to be retained, a dedicated licensed meeting organizer mailbox with delegated access is probably the cleaner long-term solution
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