Microsoft shared mailboxes are a unique type of mailbox. Unlike regular mailboxes, shared mailboxes do not have specific credentials for access. Instead, they can be accessed directly from users regular Microsoft 365 accounts. Shared mailboxes are designed to be accessed and managed by multiple users.
Connecting the shared mailbox
To connect a Microsoft shared mailbox to fetch emails sent to it to LiveAgent, navigate to Configuration > Email > Incoming Email Accounts, click the "Integrate New Email Account", and in the connection window select the "Microsoft" connector.
In the next "Connect new Microsoft account" window simply click "Connect". A Microsoft authorization window will pop up. Here, you need to authenticate yourself via your regular Microsoft account.
After authentication, the Microsoft window automatically closes and LiveAgent offers you to either connect the email address through which you authorized as a general mailbox, or specify a shared mailbox. Select the "Shared mailbox" here, and enter the address of the shared mailbox. Click "Verify" to allow the system check whether you have access to the shared mailbox and proced.
Only Microsoft users with the read and manage permissions for the shared mailbox can connect it to LiveAgent.
In the next configuration screen, name your incoming email account for easy identification among the other email accounts. Next, decide whether you want to:
- skip all existing emails in the mailbox and fetch into LiveAgent only new emails that are received after the incoming email account is successfully connected,
- or fetch all existing emails in the mailbox into LiveAgent which already are in your mailbox. If you select this option, newly received emails will not be fetched until all the existing emails are fetched. This can take some time depending on the number of emails in your inbox, read more here.
Furthermore, decide what should happen with the emails after they are fetched to LiveAgent, whether you want to leave them in the mailbox, or delete them from it. If you'll leave all emails in the mailbox, they will be marked as read in it. If you'll choose to delete the emails from the mailbox, they will be erased from it and therefore available only in LiveAgent.
It is recommended to leave emails in the mailbox as well once they are fetched, as the sources of emails are stored in our database only for 60 days, so after that they would be not available anywhere.
Lastly, select in which department emails fetched from the shared mailbox should create tickets and finish the integration.
That's it, your Microsoft 365 shared mailbox will be successfully connected, and you can start fetching emails from it to your LiveAgent account. See also the guide on how to connect Microsoft 365 shared mailbox as an outgoing email account to sent emails from it.