Shared mailbox access is requested through the self-service portal under Email → Shared Mailbox Access. Fulfilment is automated once approval completes — typically within 15 minutes. This article explains what to request.
Permission levels
- Full Access — read everything, manage folders. The mailbox appears automatically in Outlook within an hour.
- Send As — messages appear to come from the mailbox itself. Requires mailbox-owner approval.
- Send on Behalf — messages show "you on behalf of mailbox". Default for team mailboxes.
Why Send As is gated
Send As makes your message indistinguishable from one sent by the mailbox itself, which matters for mailboxes like finance@ or hr@ — recipients act on the apparent sender. The owner approval step exists to keep the list of people who can speak as that mailbox deliberate.
For administrators
# Grant Full Access without automapping (for users in many mailboxes)Add-MailboxPermission -Identity "finance-ap" -User jsmith \ -AccessRights FullAccess -AutoMapping $false # Audit who currently holds accessGet-MailboxPermission -Identity "finance-ap" | Where-Object { $_.User -notlike 'NT AUTHORITY\*' -and -not $_.IsInherited } | Select-Object User, AccessRightsTagsExchangeM365PermissionsSelf Service
Was this article helpful?
97% of 2,955 readers found it useful