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Microsoft 365 - Shared Departmental Service Accounts

There are instances where more than one person needs to interact with a Service Account. This document provides some direction and gotchas for administrators who create (manage) the account and for end users who are interacting with the account.

For the departmental user:

  • Service Account Access: When you are granted full mailbox permissions to the account, you can manage it in any Outlook client. Learn more.
  • Error Messages: If you are unable to access the service account via Outlook on the web and receive one of the following errors: "Something went wrong" or "Bad Request", please review our known issues - search for 'something went wrong'. You will need to contact your domain admin for assistance.
  • Incoming Mail: In both Outlook on the web and Outlook, incoming mail appears in the Inbox of the Service Account and can be read/moved/deleted/forwarded/replied to from there.
  • Outgoing Mail:
    • In Outlook on the web, a new message can be created and sent from the Service Account, and stored in the Service Account’s Sent folder.
    • In Outlook, a new message will be From your user account and stored in your account’s Sent Items folder.
    • In Outlook on the web or Outlook, replies/forwards from the Service Account Inbox appear From the Service Account.
    • In Outlook on the web the replied message is stored in the Service Account’s Sent folder, in Outlook the reply or forward is stored in your user account Sent folder.
  • To actually send a message FROM the Service Account in Outlook: Click “New Email”. Then in the “Options” tab of the new message window, select “From”. This gives you a From box in the message, with a pull-down. Click the pull-down arrow and change to the email address of the Service Account. The sent message still gets stored in the user’s Sent folder.
  • When multiple people are interacting with the same service account, there needs to be some work flow process in place so that messages/calendar events are dealt with in an expected manner. The major issues are to make sure: messages are not deleted or doubly replied to, and calendar events are not modified or deleted by accident.

For domain administrators:

  • If a user is unable to access the service account via Outlook on the web and they receive one of the following errors: "Something went wrong" or "Bad Request", please review our known issues - search for 'something went wrong'.
  • Service Accounts are hidden by default. Control this setting.
  • Our known issues document contains some other useful information regarding service accounts - search for 'service account' to find it more easily.

Note: If you experience any issues related to a service account, please review the known issues documentation before contacting the DoIT Help Desk.



Keywords:
microsoft o365 m365 microsoft 365 office365 email calendar calendaring sharing accessing using migration migrate service account
Doc ID:
39681
Owned by:
O365 S. in Microsoft 365
Created:
2014-04-30
Updated:
2025-06-11
Sites:
DoIT Help Desk, Microsoft 365