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Email, Mailing Lists, Distribution Groups, and Departmental Shared Email accounts

Information on various group email options.

Summary: 

If you want to distribute email to many people at once, you need a mailing list or distribution group. If you want several people to be able to send and receive email from a single email address, you need a group email account. If you want to create an entry for your group that can be found by searching in the directory, you need a departmental shared email. 

What's the difference between a mailing list, a group email account, and a departmental shared email? 

A mailing list is a system that distributes email to a range of subscribers. Email sent to a mailing list address can be controlled and verified in various ways before it's distributed to the subscribers' personal email addresses. A mailing list is not associated with any Illinois Directory information, such as telephone or fax numbers or street addresses. Searching for a mailing list's email address in the directory is unlikely to return results. 

A group email account is a single email account that can be accessed by a range of people. In contrast, a departmental shared email is an entry in the Illinois Directory with a range of information about a particular group (or unit). A group or unit alias can have telephone number, fax number, street address, email address, web, and other information associated with it. 

A departmental shared email (formerly known as group alias) can have only one email address associated with it. That associated email address can belong to an individual, to a mailing list, or to an email account that a department accesses. However, a group alias cannot directly handle email distribution services to a range of people. 

How do I create a mailing list or distribution group? 

How do I create a group email account (also known as a resource account)? 

 

How do I create a departmental shared email? 

Visit the Shared Email page. This is now a PowerApps Canvas Form. New users will see a pop-up asking permissions for the Office365Users connector. This is so the form can do validation on alias proxies.
Once the alias for the departmental shared email has been created, you will use the Electronic Directory Editor (EDE) to add and maintain information in the entry.

Keywords:
Electronic Illinois Directory, Mailing List, Group Email Accounts, Resource Aliases, Unit Aliases, proxy authorization, department, departmental, alias, request, exchange 
Doc ID:
47681
Owned by:
Identity and Access Management in University of Illinois Technology Services
Created:
2015-02-26
Updated:
2024-06-21
Sites:
University of Illinois Technology Services