Chapter 11: Sharing Mail, Calendars, and Contacts

When was the last time you waited until noon to open your email? Many people try but very few actually manage to do that. For most of us, checking our email is the first thing we do when we get up or when we get to the office. One of the biggest advantages of sending email is that delivery is fast. In contrast to traditional mail services, we can send emails 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We can check and read our emails at any hour of the day on any day of the year too. But is that really to our advantage and is it productive?

Many productivity gurus will tell you that scheduling a time to read your email will help you save time. I believe this is true and I encourage everyone to do this. I also believe asking for a little help is a good solution, which opens up concepts we will cover in this chapter on sharing your mail, calendar, and contacts with others to help you manage and monitor them. Many executives refer to such “others” as assistants.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following topics:

• Sharing mail, calendars, and contacts
• Permissions
• Changing/editing delegate permissions
• Requesting sharing

Sharing mail, calendars, and contacts

When we think of sharing our Outlook objects, such as email, calendars, or contacts, we think of giving the other person or assistant our personal email ID and password so that they can access our account and do everything inside our Outlook account. This is a possibility, but it also can leave you at risk of having your account compromised. The results of this action could be in the form of data leaks, loss of reputation, financial losses, and, depending on the severity of the actions, possibly even prison.

Sharing passwords is never a good idea no matter how well you trust the person. In most businesses, the sharing of passwords would violate the business’s information security policy and procedures. Luckily, Outlook has a feature to share access to your Outlook account.

In Outlook, the term delegate refers to any user who has access to another user’s mail folders. This can enable them to receive, respond to, and send emails and perform other actions on that user’s behalf. The delegate must be within your Exchange account and available in your Global Address List (GAL). The access selected will grant the person assigned as the delegate the right to act on your behalf within their profiles.

1. To assign rights to a delegate, from the account that you want to give the delegate access to, click File | Info | Account Settings | Delegate Access.

Figure 11.1 – Delegate Access

2. In the Delegates dialogue box, click the Add… button.

   Note

   If another delegate has been assigned previously, the email ID of that person will be listed in the white box in this window. We will discuss this later in this chapter.

Figure 11.2 – Delegates Add… button

3. Once you click the Add… button, the Add Users dialogue box will open.
4. In this Add Users dialogue box, you can search for a delegate’s email ID by using the All Columns or Name only options.

Figure 11.3 – Add Users

5. Once you have typed a name into the search box, click the Add button toward the bottom of this box. The name will appear in the field to the right of the Add button.
6. Click OK.

Figure 11.4 – Adding a name to add a user

If the name is in the Exchange account assigning the delegate, then you will get a Delegate Permissions dialogue box, otherwise, you will get the following error box.

Figure 11.5 – Rights error

There is nothing you can do to correct this error except give the delegate an email ID on your server for your business account. This will have to be done by the administrator for your company’s M365 account. Click OK for this box to go away and you will be back to the Delegates dialog box where you can type in the correct email ID of the delegate you want to enter.

Permissions

Permissions allow the delegate to have specific rights when using your account or accounts. You control the level of rights they have by assigning permissions:

1. In the Add Users dialogue box, type in the last name of the person you would like to make a delegate in the search box.

This person, as stated before, must be a user in your GAL. You may have to select the GAL from the dropdown in the Address Book section, as shown in the following figure.

Figure 11.6 – Add Users

The available names will appear in the main window, and you can select the person you want as the delegate from this list.

2. You can either double-click on the name or click once on the name to select it and then click the Add button, as seen previously. After selecting the name (or names) to set as a delegate, click on the OK button.

Figure 11.7 – Add Users selected from the GAL

Note

Next to the Add button in the textbox, be sure that only the name of the delegate is selected so as to not duplicate anything. If any of these names are not in the Exchange GAL, you will get an error box.

3. If the user is identified in the GAL, you will see the following Delegate Permissions: Name dialogue box. You can set up the delegate’s permissions in this box.

Figure 11.8 – Delegate Permissions: Name

4. When you click on the drop-down arrows by each of the object types in the Delegate Permissions dialogue box, you can select from four options:
   • None
   • Reviewer
   • Author
   • Editor

These types are explained in Table 11.1 – Permissions.

Be very selective with the rights you want to grant to delegates, and I would recommend that you occasionally re-evaluate them throughout the year to see whether you want to adjust your settings for each delegate.

Figure 11.9 – Drop-down selection for Calendar

Table 11.1 – Permissions

5. Beneath the Calendar selection, there is the checkbox Delegate receives copies of meeting-related messages sent to me.

Figure 11.10 – Delegate extra permissions

• Point 1: This is indicated by the number one in the preceding figure. Checking this box will send a copy of any emails relating to any meetings scheduled for the email ID. Often, the delegate will also be responsible for monitoring all entries on the calendar. Giving this permission is an easy way to keep the delegate involved and informed.

Figure 11.11 – Delegate receives copies

• Point 2: The second checkbox in Figure 11.10 is Automatically send a message to delegate summarizing these permissions. If checked, an email will be sent to the delegate indicating the permissions that they have been granted. I have seen it happen that the delegate has been given authority but had no idea because communication was not followed through. This ensures that the delegate will be notified via email automatically.
• Point 3: The third checkbox is Delegate can see my private items.

Figure 11.12 – Delegate permissions and private items

Note

To ensure that delegates can’t read the items that you have marked as private, do not grant them Reviewer permissions in your calendar, contacts, or Tasks folder.

6. Once you have completed granting permissions in the Delegate Permissions dialogue box, click OK for the permissions to be applied and, if selected, an email will be sent to the delegate automatically.

The following figure is an example of the email that will be sent to the delegate.

Figure 11.13 – Delegate email

Viewing delegated folders

Let's take a look at the delegate permissions that enable you to view the objects of the user that has granted you the permissions.

To view the objects of the user, click File | Open & Export | Other User’s Folder. From the drop-down arrow, select the folder you wish to view.

Figure 11.14 – View another user’s folder

The shared user folder will be opened in the shared folder and, depending on your permissions, you can perform tasks inside of the folder.

Inbox permissions

If you have permission to send emails on behalf of the user, you will see the new mail window shown in the following figure.

Figure 11.15 – Send From Other Email Address

The Send From Other Email Address dialogue box will have a From… box showing the message will be sent from your email ID and the Send Using box will indicate that you are sending it from the email ID shown.

Calendar permissions

To view calendar items after opening the shared folder as seen previously, on the selected calendar, perform the following steps:

1. Click on the Shared Calendars item that appears in the navigation pane.
2. Click in the blank box next to the calendar that you want to view.
3. Once clicked, the calendar will be shown in the work area.

Figure 11.16 – Shared Calendars

Note

If Calendar permissions are the only permissions you are granting to a delegate, you can click on the Calendar object. Then, click Home | Share Calendar. Choose the calendar you want to delegate and make the necessary adjustments through the Calendar Properties dialogue box.

Contacts permissions

Shared contacts will appear as shown previously with calendars. There are a few rules you will need to be aware of with contacts:

• Contacts you add or edit will not appear in your contacts but will appear in the sharing person’s contacts.You can edit and delete their contacts.
• You can use search to find their contacts. Type Delegated Contacts in the search box and select the name of the person who delegated the contacts to you.

Changing/editing delegate permissions

To change any of the permissions that have been assigned to a delegate, take the following steps:

1. Click File | Account Settings | Delegate Access, as shown in Figure 11.8 – Delegate Permissions.
2. Uncheck the boxes next to the permissions for the Outlook folders the delegate has access to, or check a box if you want to give permissions for that folder.
3. Check the box Automatically send a message to delegate summarizing these permissions.

   Note

   To remove all the delegate’s permissions at once, don’t click Permissions in step 1; click Remove and skip the rest of the steps.

Request sharing

If you need permissions for sharing and you do not have them, you can have Outlook generate an email to request this action from a user that is on Exchange. This example will show asking permission to share a user’s contacts.

1. Click Home | Open Shared Contacts.

Figure 11.17 – Open Shared Contacts

2. Enter the email ID of the person whose contacts you want to share in the Open Shared Contacts dialogue box.

Figure 11.18 – Enter name in Open Shared Contacts

3. Exchange will not recognize the permissions granted for your request and will ask Do you want to ask <the name requested> to share his or her Contacts folder with you?

Figure 11.19 – Error viewing folder

4. Click Yes to have an email created.

The email will be addressed to the recipient that you are requesting permissions from as shown.

Figure 11.20 – Email generated to request permissions

5. You can customize the email with a message if you prefer. The checkbox Request permission to view recipient’s Contacts folder is selected by default. You also have an option below this: Allow recipient to view your Contacts folder. You must click in this box to allow this action, which will also open another dialogue box, asking if you want to do this and indicating that the permissions granted will be Reviewer (read-only), which will have buttons for Yes and No.

Figure 11.21 – Share Contacts via email

6. The following figure is the email that will be sent to the recipient once you click on the Send button in the generated email.

Figure 11.22 – Email requesting permissions to view

The recipient of the email will need to request to grant delegate permissions to the user as described earlier in this chapter. There is a link in the email to access help online for these steps.

Note

Not all objects will have the Open Shared… button on the Home ribbon. To do the same steps as indicated for the People object previously, you can right-click on the item in the navigation bar and click Share (Item) from the drop-down menu, such as Share Notes or Share Task.

Summary

Having a person known as a delegate in Outlook is the same as having an assistant that helps you control your incoming mail, but they control the folders that you have delegated to them to maintain within Outlook. Not only can they receive and respond to your emails but they can also control your calendars, events, contacts, and tasks, all without you giving your passwords to them to access your account. By delegating to them, they will use their own account to maintain your account. This is one of my favorite tips for saving time with Outlook and I have found it to be a real productivity booster!

In the next chapter, we will discuss archiving and backing up your Outlook items. Is your data protected in M365? We will discuss how secure your data is in Outlook and what you need to be aware of. After applying the techniques in the next chapter, you will feel confident that your email is secure and protected, and you will be able to locate any email quickly after archiving and backing up your items.

Questions

1. I have several administrators that update my calendars and emails and occasionally a meeting change will happen and only half the recipients will see the change. Why does this happen?
2. I can’t click on the Share your Calendar button. Why not?
3. How do I share my calendar via email?
4. How do I enable sharing of my calendar in the M365 admin center?
5. I keep getting an error when trying to share my calendar and want to try updating Outlook. How do I run an update?

Answers

1. Unfortunately, giving authority to several people is not a great idea. Remember that with delegates, the last change wins. If an executive accepts a meeting invite and then a delegate declines the invite, the last change will win. In this case, the delegate would overwrite the executive’s authority. You need to have one person who is responsible for making any changes to appointments.
2. If the Share your Calendar button is grayed out and you cannot click on it to activate the command, it’s most likely because the administrator of the account or IT department has prevented you from sharing calendars.
3. If you don’t want to assign a delegate for others to view your calendar, you can email the calendar.

1. Click Calendar | E-mail Calendar, enter the calendar’s name and the date range that you want to email, and click OK.
2. The new email will open the address of the recipient or To field. Add any message and click Send.
3. The recipient of the email will see a snapshot image of your calendar.
4. Sign in to Office 365 on the web (www.office.com). Click Admin | Settings | Org settings | Service Tab | Calendar. From this calendar page, select the settings you want to allow the user to share the calendar.
5. Open Outlook and click File | Office Account | Update Options | Update Now.