1

I work in an organization where we're planning to implement personal AD-accounts for all our users. So far I've overcome a number of challenges while running this implementation. But now I came upon an challenge which I haven't found a solution so far.

We are a public broadcasting company and have an single mailbox where all press release come in, I would like to auto-configure Outlook with the username, password and mailserver settings for every user. Preferably deployable via a GPO.

I've tried using the OCT, but this didn't let me set passwords for the account. Is it even possible or should I think of an other solution for this problem?

Bram Wittendorp
  • 11
  • 2

2 Answers2

1

If your mail server is Microsoft Exchange

If you need multiple different users to have access to a single mailbox then why not just grant those users access to the shared mailbox?

Create an Exchange mailbox for each of them like you would each other employee but then have an additional Exchange mailbox and then grant each of those users access to the shared mailbox. You can do that by using the PowerShell command below:

Add-MailboxPermission sharedmailbox@domain -User username@domain -AccessRights FullAccess

You would replace "sharedmailbox@domain" with the email address of the shared mailbox. You would replace username@domain with the email address of the user you are granting access to the shared mailbox. The PowerShell command will need to be run on the Exchange server. If you run it on a different server or on a workstation it will fail because it needs the Exchange modules for PowerShell.

You are moving in the right direction. Just like each user should have their own AD account they should each have their own Exchange mailbox.

When they open Outlook for the first time on a domain joined machine, Outlook (depending on how new your version is) will automatically fill out the name and username fields and then because the computer is joined to the domain, single sign on magic happens and they should not be asked for their password.

I you add them to the shared mailbox using the PowerShell command I wrote then when they restart Outlook they should see two mailboxes in Outlook. One mailbox will be their personal mailbox and one mailbox will be the shared mailbox.

In this case Group Policy is not the right tool for the job. Group Policy is used to push rules and setting information not for entering passwords, creating accounts, or changing Exchange permissions.

If your mail server is not Microsoft Exchange

You will want to use Group Policy to push a PRF file which is made from the OCT file you create. There are specific instructions on doing this very easily found on the Internet so I won't repost them here. If you have a specific question about how to do this, please let me know.

Here is a page of information covering numerous different ways to push Outlook settings to multiple users. http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/deployprf.htm

user5870571
  • 2,900
  • 2
  • 11
  • 33
0

We don't use an Exchange mailserver. I've found the tutorial for pushing an PRF file. But so far I haven't found an option to set the credentials for all users. Is that possible in an PRF-file?

Bram Wittendorp
  • 11
  • 2