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Forward a Shared Inbox from Microsoft 365

An email channel gives your workspace a shared address, like [email protected]. Mail sent to that address has to reach Grovana somehow. You do that by forwarding the mailbox to the private address Grovana gives you.

Setup has two halves: create the channel in Grovana, then point Microsoft at it.

Part 1: Create the channel in Grovana

  1. Go to Settings → Communication.

  2. Click Add email channel.

  3. In Source Email Address, type the shared address you want to receive mail at, for example [email protected].

  4. In Display Name, type the name recipients see, for example Grovana Contact.

  5. Click Save.

  6. Grovana now shows a Forwarding address. It looks like ch_2cd282d193b5@<your-inbound-domain>. Click Copy.

Note

Each channel gets its own forwarding address. Never point two mailboxes at the same one, or their mail will land in the same place.

Part 2: Create the shared mailbox

Skip this part if [email protected] already exists in Microsoft 365.

  1. Open the Exchange admin center.
  2. Go to Recipients → Mailboxes.

  3. Click Add a shared mailbox.

  4. Fill in the Display name.

  5. Fill in the Email address and pick your domain.
  6. Click Create. It takes a minute to appear in the list.

Part 3: Forward the mailbox to Grovana

  1. In Recipients → Mailboxes, click the mailbox to open it.

  2. Click Email forwarding.

  3. Turn Forward all emails sent to this mailbox on.

  4. Choose Forward to an external email address and paste the forwarding address you copied from Grovana.
  5. Tick Deliver message to both forwarding address and mailbox so your team keeps a copy in Outlook.
  6. Click Save.

Microsoft says changes can take up to 5 minutes to apply.

Part 4: Allow forwarding to external addresses

This step is easy to miss. Without it, no mail reaches Grovana.

By default, Microsoft 365 blocks automatic forwarding to addresses outside your organization. The mail is rejected and the original sender receives a bounce that reads:

5.7.520 Access denied, Your organization does not allow external forwarding.

To allow it:

  1. Open the Microsoft Defender portal.
  2. Go to Email & collaboration → Policies & rules → Threat policies → Anti-spam.
  3. Open your Anti-spam outbound policy, or create a new one that applies only to your shared mailboxes.
  4. Click Edit protection settings.
  5. Set Automatic forwarding rules to On - Forwarding is enabled.
  6. Save.

Warning

Turning this on for your whole tenant lets any compromised account forward mail out. Create a policy scoped to only the shared mailboxes you are connecting, rather than editing the default one.

Part 5: Test it

Send an email from an outside address (a personal Gmail works) to [email protected]. It should appear in Grovana within a minute or two.

Troubleshooting

Senders get a 5.7.520 bounce

External forwarding is still blocked. Repeat Part 4 and confirm the policy you edited applies to this mailbox.

Nothing arrives, and there is no bounce either

Compare the forwarding address in Exchange character for character with the one in Grovana. A single wrong character means the mail is delivered nowhere useful and silently dropped.

Mail no longer appears in Outlook

Deliver message to both forwarding address and mailbox was left unticked. Tick it and save.

The channel receives mail but cannot send

Receiving and sending are separate. Sending requires your domain to be verified under the channel's Sending domain section, which means adding the DNS records Grovana lists there.

Using a different provider? See Google Workspace or any other mail provider.