How to get alerts for mailbox permission changes: Office 365

In Microsoft Office 365, users who have access to global or network administrator status give mailbox permissions to restrict or release certain tasks you can carry out in Office 365. Thankfully, the network user may build an alert in Microsoft 365 that sends an email notification to selected recipients upon changing permissions. If an administrator provides Full Access to any user’s mailbox, the receiver will receive an email notification of the permission grant. You must ensure auditing is turned on so that any permissions changes that are made are picked up by your account and are sent to you. This blog will explain how to set up an alert for a change in mailbox permissions in Exchange Online or Microsoft 365.

Step by step process – How to get alerts for mailbox permission changes: Office 365?

  • First, sign into your Office 365 account.
  • Use the app launcher and navigate to admin.
  • Click on “Show All” to reveal “Admin centers”.
  • Under “Admin centers” on the left, click on “Compliance”.
  • Click on “Policies” on the left hand menu.
  • Click on “Alert” followed by “Alert policies”.
  • Then click on “+ New alert policy”.
  • Name and describe your policy.(This can be anything resembling the permission change).
  • Set “Severity” to “Medium”.
  • Set “Category” to “Permissions”.
  • Click on “Next”
  • Now set “Activity is” to “Granted Mailbox Permission”.
  • Now click on “Next”.
  • Enter the mail recipient (This can be you or any delegate you trust).
  • Then click on “Next”.
  • Review your final alert policy and make changes if necessary.
  • Finally, click on “Finish” and your new alert policy has been created.

Now every time a user of admin status makes a change to the mailbox permissions, you will be sent an alert via email, confirming that changes to mailbox permissions have been made. Any other users that have been assigned to receive the notification will also be notified of permission changes to a mailbox.

What is an alert policy in Office 365?

You can establish alert policies and then examine the alerts that are produced when users do actions that fulfil the requirements of an alert policy using the Microsoft 365 compliance center’s alert policy and alert dashboard capabilities. Default alert settings let you keep track of things like assigning admin rights in Exchange Online, malware assaults, phishing campaigns, and unusually high volumes of file deletions and external sharing.

Alert policies allow you to classify the alerts that are generated by a policy, apply the policy to all users in your company, establish an alert threshold level, and choose whether or not to receive email notifications when alerts are triggered. The compliance center also has an Alerts tab where you can browse and filter alerts, create an alert status to assist you in managing warnings, and then dismiss alerts after the underlying issue has been addressed or resolved.

Using the Alert policies page in the compliance center, an admin in your business creates, configures, and activates an alert policy. You may also use the New-ProtectionAlert cmdlet in Security & Compliance Center PowerShell to set alert rules.

An alert policy is made up of a collection of rules and criteria that specify the user or admin action that triggers an alert, a list of users who trigger the alert if they do the activity, and a threshold that specifies the number of times the activity must occur before an alert is issued. You also set a severity level to the policy and classify it. Because you may filter on these parameters while managing policies and viewing alerts in the compliance center, these two options assist you in managing alert policies (and the alerts that are issued when the policy requirements are met). For example, you can see alerts that meet circumstances from the same category or alerts with the same severity level.

Why have a mailbox permission change policy?

While admin changes and restrictions on what they can do are unavoidable, you can still apply alert policies to record any changes they decide to make. This way, you have some form of the idea of why something appears to be different within your mailbox.

Admin mailbox permission changes may incur a loss of email-based content, which may cause issues for you either as a recipient of an email or as a sender of an email. Policies help you alert the administrative team that the changes they have made have consequential effects on either your productivity or you are losing content. You can also keep a record in case the administrative members of the network issue you the liability of any lost content.

In depth step by step process – How to get alerts for mailbox permission changes

Step by step breakdown:

  • First sign into your Office 365 account.

Use your account details, or if you have a current Skype account with the Office account in question, you can use this.

  • Use the application launcher to navigate towards “Admin”.

The launcher is illustrated by nine dots in the right corner, click on it and find “Admin”, as shown above.

  • Click on “Show All” to reveal “Admin centers”.

You may not need to click on “Show all” if, for instance, the admin center content that is required is pinned to the main menu. In this case, just follow the next step and remove the blocked user.

  • Under “Admin centers” on the left, click on “Compliance”.

Initially, both the “Security” and “compliance” tab were as one single software; however, in the latest few updates by Microsoft, both the security feature and the compliance feature have been separated. This improves functionality and refines what the user wants.

  • Click on “Policies” on the left hand menu.
  • Click on “Alert” followed by “Alert policies”.
  • Then click on “+ New alert policy”.
  • Name and describe your policy.(This can be anything resembling the permission change).
  • Set “Severity” to “Medium”.
  • Set “Category” to “Permissions”.
  • Click on “Next”.
  • Now set “Activity is” to “Granted Mailbox Permission”.
  • Now click on “Next”.
  • Enter the mail recipient (This can be you or any delegate you trust).
  • Then click on “Next”.
  • Review your final alert policy and make changes if necessary.
  • Finally, click on “Finish” and your new alert policy has been created.

That’s it for this Blog — thank you for taking time out to read our content. Please feel free to email our team about how it went if you followed the steps or if you need more help with the questions we answered in this Blog.

Saajid Gangat

Saajid Gangat has been a researcher and content writer at Business Tech Planet since 2021. Saajid is a tech-savvy writer with expertise in web and graphic design and has extensive knowledge of Microsoft 365, Adobe, Shopify, WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, and more! You can connect with Saajid on Linkedin.

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