SOLVED

You no longer receive messages sent to Office 365 'Groups' that you are a member of

Copper Contributor

Seems like a very recent change but if you email a group that you are a member of you no longer get the message in your own inbox.

 

If others email the group you get the message so you are subscribed properly and I can confirm same issue against other groups.

 

You can see the mesage in your Sent Items and in the Group itself.

 

Looks like this changed mid this week.

 

Anyone have same issue?

61 Replies

Mmm...I can confirm that I'm experiencing this cc @Tejas Mehta @cfiessinger

@jcgonzalezmartin @Darren Burke - this is correct.

 

We have recently fixed the behavior where the sender of an email to a group used to receive it back in their inbox. We belive sending an email to a person or to a group should be consistent, and this circling back of an email from a group was just leading to confusion, unnecessary triage, and inconvenience for a lot of our users.

 

We understand that some users had started using this inconsistent behavior as a way to confirm if their emails were delivered to a group, but as Darren pointed out, an email sent to a group is already available in the group's conversation archive as well as in the sender's sent email. CCing oneself in a group email could also be a way to confirm email delivery.

 

There was a technical issue because of which the communication of this change on the message center lagged the roll out of this change, but it should be live soon. Apologies for that.

 

Hope this helps.

I remember this was requested by some members here, and I agree that consistent behavior across all modalities is important. Groups however sit in between "standard" recipient types, so now I guess people will complain again and give examples with sending messages to DLs. Guess there's no pleasing all 🙂

Nice to know...did you post a message about this change in the Message center?
Well, I always take the Pareto Principle into account for such changes 😉
Yes, it will be live any moment now. Got delayed because of a technical glitch.

Thank you Juan - I see it listed under Feature ID: 76175

 

Office 365 Group member who sends email to the group will not receive that email in their individual inbox
An Office 365 Group member who sends email to the group will no longer receive that email in their individual inbox.Previously, when a member of an Office 365 group that was subscribed to the group - i.e., they receive emails to the group in their individual inbox as well as in the group's shared inbox - sent an email to that group, the member would receive a copy of their email in their individual inbox.
More info
Feature ID: 76175
Tags: O365, Groups

 

Will there be an option to override this and revert to original functionality?

 

 

At least for now there is not a way to revert it 😞

I just saw this in the Office 365 Admin Message center.  For me this is a welcome change as a lot of my users didn't like the fact that when they sent to this group that they got a copy of the message in their inbox.

 

We converted from GMail to Office 365 recently and that was the way it behaved so they wanted it the same way.  

 

You will never please everyone.

For those replacing Exchange Distribution Lists with O365 Groups, the expected behaviour is that the sender does receive a copy of emails that they send (if sending to a group that they are a member of). I can understand many NOT wanting to receive their own messages, but others (especially if coming from a DL) WOULD want to receive it, as "that's the way it has always worked before".

I understand that may be backward thinking, but it would be nice to give us the choice how we want the behavior to work. Sometimes, it is just easier for my users if I can keep something working as it has, even if only to make a transition go more smoothly from old ways of doing things to new ways.
Totally agree, providing a way to choose the desired behaviour per group could be nice

In my opinion, making this change without providing the admin a means to control the behaviour is an incredibly bad move.  Particularly since the behaviour applies to both groups and distribution lists.  I understand that there are organizations that would prefer people to not get copies of what they send to a distribution list.  But there are people who depend on that closed loop of seeing the copy come back to their inbox to know that the mail actually went through.  You're dictating a value system here.

 

Further, every other distribution list system I'm aware of either provides a means for the list owner to control this or sends a copy back to the originator.  

 

I just spend two evenings trying to trace what looked like a mail delivery problem for a new O365 tenant I just set up for a non-profit because this behavior is completely non-standard, different from what it was when I set up a different tenant in late 2016, and completely undocumented in the UI.

 

Please provide both a global setting for a tenant -- so the admin can control the default behavior, and a per-group setting so that a group owner can choose what works for them.  

 

Bruce Wilson

Chief Technology Officer, Information Technology Services Division

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

@Bruce Wilson - totally understand your concern. But, to clarify, this behavior *only* affects O365 Groups in Outlook and NOT distribution lists (DLs).

 

For DLs, the email sending behavior continues to behave the same way it has always been. If a sender emails a DL, the sender would receive that email back in his/her inbox. The item would also be present in the sender's sent email folder.

 

One big advantage of O365 groups in Outlook vs. DLs is that the former has an archive & history of all the conversations that have taken place in that group. This conversation archive is equally visible to each member of the group at any time. Hence, the additional email that sender receives back in their inbox becomes superfluous. This conversation history/archive is not available for DLs. We had received a lot of user feedback around this superfluous email sending behavior and we have corrected it for Groups in Outlook.

 

You speak about workflows that get triggered once the sender receive their email back in their inbox. Though this won't break the behavior for DLs but for Groups, have you explored using Flow Automation to trigger some of these workflows? (https://flow.microsoft.com/)

 

 

This really should have been implemented as an option, not something forced.

 

It doesnt really seem consistent to have the new o365 groups NOT work like on prem DLs do.

 

This behavior is\was expected, and a mix of people want\dont want it, so really should have been optional not some random global change.

Lifting... Is this still the behaviour?

I'm almost 100% certain that I a few month back received my own mails sent to a Group. I do see settings for this in the group:
"Follow in inbox - receive all conversations and events"
"Send all group conversations to members' inboxes. They can stop following this group later if they want to"

Those are ticked, but I still don't receive my own mails to a group.

What's up with this...?

Ditto.  We are already faced with trying encourage adoption.  Now we have to explain the blurred lines between Sharepoint, O365 groups, on prem distribution lists...  As an IT force interacting daily with users, these discrepancies in behavior make it very difficult to champion adoption of the product.  

This is a huge issue for us.  Especially considering that both in Outlook and in the group options screen in the Exchange Admin Center there is an option to send to the Inbox.  Is that just a useless checkbox?  Considering that Office 365 groups are positioned as an "upgrade" to distribution lists I would think that removing functionality wouldn't come along with that.  An example of where this will bit you is if you are using ActiveSync to connect to your account you cannot see the 365 groups nor would you receive a notification on your phone.  If this is the way it is going to be I am going to be forced to revert all of my Office 365 groups to DL's.

Messages for me *do not* appear in the Sent folder.  I cannot confirm any email I send to the group now with this new behavior.

 

Messages do appear in the group conversations list, but how do I know anyone will check the group conversation?  This makes the user have to check both the inbox and the group, making it more likely messages will go unreceived.

 

Meanwhile, the "following group" setting tells me I will receive a copy of all conversations in my inbox which is not true.

 

Would be great to get some group settings (not a global change) in order to address these issues.

1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by Ravin Sachdeva (Microsoft)
Solution

Update (7/25/2018):

 

Thanks for all your feedback and sharing your concerns. Our mission is to help you be more productive at your work, and some users complained about their workflows being affected with this change.

 

Based on the feedback we've seen from our users on this post, we are working on making this option configurable for our users. We are adding a switch which can be toggled by the user to start receiving their sent emails to Groups back in their inbox.

 

The exact details on how this setting can be used and the timeline for this change will be communicated soon. Thanks for your patience. 

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