How do you share a mailbox with another user in Office-365?

In a typical organisation with a Microsoft Exchange server you would select your mailbox in Outlook, right-click > Properties > Security, then give the user the appropriate permissions.  However in Office-365 this approach does not work, instead you have to delve into the inner working with PowerShell.

1. Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > Windows PowerShell > Windows PowerShell.
2. Run the following command:
   
   
   

   $LiveCred = Get-Credential
3. In the Windows PowerShell Credential Request window that opens, type the credentials of an account in your cloud-based organization. When you are finished, click OK.
4. Run the following command:
   
   
   

   $Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell/ -Credential $LiveCred -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection
   Note   The AllowRedirection parameter enables cloud-based organizations in datacenters all over the world to connect Windows PowerShell to the cloud-based service by using the same URL.
5. Run the following command:
   
   
   

   Import-PSSession $Session
   A progress indicator appears that shows the importing of commands used in the cloud-based service into the client-side session of your local computer. When this process is complete, you can run these commands.
6. To view the available mailboxes, run the following command:
   
   
   

   Get-Mailbox
7. Run the following command:
   
   
   

   Add-MailboxPermission -Identity <mailboxToShare> -User <userToAccess> -AccessRights FullAccess -InheritanceType All
   Note  <mailboxToShare> and <userToAccess> can both be replaced by the respective user's email addresses.


8. To disconnect PowerShell run the following command:
   Remove-PSSession $Session

To now add the mailbox to Outlook.  From Outlook do the following:

1. On the Tools menu, click E-Mail Accounts.
2. Click View or change existing e-mail accounts, and then click Next.
3. In the list, click the Exchange account type, and then click Change.
4. Click More Settings, and then click the Advanced tab.
5. Click Add, and then type the mailbox name of the person whose mailbox you want to add to your user profile.

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Using Office 365 Web Interface for Contact Sharing

In a recent deployment of Office 365 that I did for a customer, they were particularly interested in the ability to share contacts.


No problem, with an Exchange back-end you are able to share Calendars, Contacts and even whole mailboxes. The real problem in getting it done is the web-interface.

• User1 has just been upgraded to Outlook 2010, he right-clicks his contacts, selects properties and then on the permissions tab selects the user and then the desired permissions.
• User2 is a subcontractor and brings his own Macbook into work.  He has to buy his own copy of Outlook 2011 but this only comes bundled with Office 2011 so he chooses not to do it.  Outlook Web Access (owa) should be sufficient for his needs anyway.... shouldn't it?

It turns out that in Office 365 you can very simply view a shared calendar, or you can open another user's mailbox, what you can't do is open anything else very easily, but there is a work-around.  Thanks to Amit Tank for this tip which pointed me in the right direction: http://exchangeshare.wordpress.com/2009/06/15/how-to-open-shared-calendar-in-owa/

So the work-around for displaying shared contacts using owa is to enter the following address into a browser:

https://<server name>/owa/<SMTP address>/?cmd=contents&module=contacts

So you replace <server name> with the Office365 server which can be found in a few ways, I found it by Ctrl-Clicking on the Outlook system-tray icon for the machine running Outlook, and then selecting "Connection Status".  This brings up a box showing the server address.

You also replace the <SMTP address> with the email address of the user whose contacts you are trying to view.