Shared mailboxes (Delegate e-mail accounts)

This article contains information for University staff only.

Note: As part of the University’s Modern Work Programme migration from Google to Microsoft 365, Gmail will eventually be deprecated and Microsoft Outlook will become the default email platform.

Information Services can create a delegate email account so that a faculty, department or group of people, where appropriate, can use the account to send and receive mail from a generic name. Delegate accounts should be used where there are a group of people responsible for the same area of work e.g. instructional, research, or administrative functions. Using a delegate account can be a way of ensuring that queries are answered quickly when members of the team are away from the office.

Request a delegate account

A delegate account can be requested by completing the New Shared Mailbox Self Service request. The primary contact must be a current live Google or Microsoft account user and will be the owner.

Managing a delegate account

The primary contact is responsible for the management and administration of the account to ensure compliance with the University computer use regulations and email policy. Management of email messages in a delegated account involves identification of emails that should be retained as a record of an activity and deletion of ephemeral messages. There will be a need for some additional rules concerning when to delete an email message, how to identify an email message as having been answered and the types of email messages that should be treated as records. While it is the responsibility of the primary contact to ensure that there are specific rules relating to the management of the account, it is the responsibility of all staff members with access to the account to abide by those rules. The primary contact of the delegate account or shared mailbox will need to decide and communicate to the other users how to treat the email messages that will be received in the account. The primary contact of the account should consider the following aspects:

• Who should answer which email messages.
• How to determine that someone has responded to an email message.
• When an email has been replied to, should the received email or the reply remain in the mailbox.
• Who has the responsibility to capture records of the email messages.
• Where will the email records messages received and replied to be maintained.
• Who should respond to which email messages will depend on who has access to the account, the type of emails that are received, and will ultimately be determined by the primary contact.

The issues relating to capturing records of the email messages received in the account will require guidance about what needs to be captured as a record and where to file a record. This should be discussed with the university records manager.

Granting access

• Google instructions for granting access to other users in Gmail can be found here.
• Shared mailboxes within Microsoft can only be granted by Information Services.

Anyone who is granted operational access to a delegated email account may only view material that is considered necessary for the operational reason for which access was granted. They are required to treat all material as confidential and not to act upon it or disclose it to any other person except those directly associated with the operational requirement for which the access was granted. They must preserve the confidentiality of any private or personal data that they may view inadvertently whilst undertaking operational matters. A failure to do so could constitute an offence under the terms of the Human Rights Act 2000.