using a shared mailbox as support mail (office365)

ipf

due to the fact we have recently switched to office365 we would like to use a shared mailbox as our main support E-Mail for osTicket. Unfortunately osTicket does not suppor this (to my knowledge)

we still tried the whole thing but it doesn't work. The login to the shared mailbox, however, works from other email clients.

Username: user_email@website.com/shared_email@website.com
Password: user_password

i hope someone has a solution for this problem

ramrajone

ipf
You should not be using the Shared mailbox for the osTicket support address

the error message clearly showing issues with Authenticating, so it could be a port, IP address, firewall, etc.. not allowing

Check this post for email settings: https://howtohelpdesk.com/osticket-email-settings/

ipf

ramrajone it would cost us monthly if we had to create our own user for support in office365. Therefore I hope that someone has a detour (mod) for it since the shared mailbox authentication error resul due to the programming of osTicket.

ntozier

Microsoft "Shared Mailboxes" are not supported by osTicket. I am not aware of a way to make them work, nor do I know of a mod that will make it work.

Since shared mailbox appear to be against HIPAA / HiTech guidelines and good network security policies I feel like most companies would not use them.

You would have to edit the core source files to achieve this. This thread might help you do so:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28481028/access-office356-shared-mailbox-with-php

ipf

hello ntozier,

thanks for the link this seems useful. Looks like I'm gonna have to rewrite the e-mail handler myself.

ntozier Since shared mailbox appear to be against HIPAA / HiTech guidelines and good network security policies I feel like most companies would not use them.

Our problem is that with the switch to office365 there is no way to create a user mailbox which you don't have to pay monthly. For this reason I can imagine that several companies will now use shardes mailboxes as a workaround. Otherwise it is not worth using an open solution like osTicket if you have to pay ~20$ per month for an e-mail account, then you can just as well switch to zendesk or other providers.

ramrajone

ipf
I believe just the mailbox for office365 is about $4-5 dollars, $12.5-$20 has other applications included like MS Word, Excel, etc...

ipf

ramrajone of course you're right i only had the price in mind that we pay for our users. It's about $4-5, despite all this it makes it almost impossible for office365 users to use osTicket for free anymore just because osTicket does not want to support shardes mailboxes.

but every manufacturer can of course support what he thinks is right.

ramrajone

ipf
Well, that's your viewpoint, but based on my own experience with open source projects like osTicket compare to other similar services, this one offers more features. osTicket is free so you can customize it the way it fits in your environment, but they can't control what other vendors service.

ipf

ramrajone I understand your point of view, too. I think it's just a pity that of all the projects I use only osTicket seems to intentionally not allow shared mailbox. But we could certainly keep exchanging our opinions here all day but this won't help me or any other osTicket user who wants to use shared mailbox.

If I have found a way to implement the whole thing (or find a ready solution) i will publish it here. Of course I would be happy about an official solution (but I don't think so).

have a nice day / weekend

ntozier

@ipf Where I work we use O365 so I feel your pain.

What really irks me is what is not included for each user. We have E1 licenses, run AD locally and use Azure AD to sync it, and I cannot believe that you need to pay another @$3/mo per user to let them remotely change their gorram password.

(My firefly fanboy is shining through in that statement.)

Anyway MS Shared mailboxes are relatively new (at least to me) and we refuse to use them. I do not know if the devs plan to allow them, but it would require a change to how email is handled.

Rich_C

ntozier Another option is to use the relatively inexpensive Exchange Online Plan 1 for the support mailboxes you need. Although I suppose that what is trying to be accomplished by the OP is that they want the support staffs name to appear alongside the email.

@ipf Have you tried the following as the UID in the Username field?

"user@maindomain.com" \ <Shared Mailbox Alias>

I included quotes above to not have my \ deleted by the forum.

GiantTinyMidget

We've been using only shared mailboxes for over a year now without any problems and without adjustments to code in OSTicket.

We use the following settings in every mail address in OSticket:

henninga

GiantTinyMidget Hi. We are using the same settings on our supportweb, except the user name of course :-), but get this error "TLS/SSL failure for outlook.office365.com: Unexpected TCP input disconnect". This came with the upgrade to 1.14.3, and it did work perfect before on osticket 1.12.x version. Have you struggled with this issue as well and solved it? Thansk for any answers that can help.

LewisHackfath

I am currently using a shared mailbox as my main support inbox.
Once you create the shared mailbox a user account should appear for it in the O365 user manager.
You can then set the password for it.

Once the password is set you can use it like a regular mail inbox.

SteRinaldi

Hi. IT WORKS!!!!!
I'm using the latest OSTicket version 1.14.3 and I succeeded setting a shared mailbox as support email, thanks to LewisHackfath suggest.

ntozier

Good to know! Thanks for the info.

LewisHackfath

@SteRinaldi glad i could help

BrianT1414

@LewisHackfath @giorgio @SteRinaldi Did you have to change any other settings in O365? I'm trying to set up a new instance to test usage of a shared box, but am getting the "Can not authenticate to IMAP server: AUTHENTICATE failed." error as in the original question. In the O365 admin center I can see the failed login attempt with message "Access has been blocked by Conditional Access policies. The access policy does not allow token issuance.". I've set the password, and verified by logging in directly with it. This leads me to believe its an issue on the O365 side, but I don't know what, as far as I can tell, no policies have been added or updated from the defaults.. Any help would be much appreciated.

LewisHackfath

BrianT1414 hmmmm not sure what this could be.... I didn't change any of the settings in OST or in O365

i did find this.
Maybe check that out?
Microsoft might have implemented new default settings
https://tech.nicolonsky.ch/device-code-auth-ca/