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Distribution Lists

This article guides you through the EasyLife 365 Mail learning path. The goal of the EasyLife 365 Mail learning path is to increase your understanding of how to work with the EasyLife 365 Admin and demonstrate how EasyLife templates and policies work. This learning path takes you through all of EasyLife's policy stages and actions. The learning path requires four days to complete a full cycle as the EasyLife engine scans run once per day. The individual time required is less then one hour per day.

We want a learning distribution list to have at least two owners. The distribution list's usage has to be confirmed by the owners after one day. We will also configure an access review policy that requires the owners to review members of the distribution list after one day.

Prerequisites​

To complete this exercise, there are a few things we will need to have.

  • Complete the onboarding.
  • You will required a Notifications Email Address to which the policies will be configured to send notifications.
  • Login to the EasyLife 365 Admin to create policies and templates.
  • Login to the EasyLife 365 Mail App to use these policies and templates to create resources.
  • Observe, over a number of days, the EasyLife 365 Mail Engine applying the policies to distribution lists we created.

Create policies and templates​

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This part of the exercise is completed in the EasyLife 365 Admin. Sign in to the EasyLife 365 Admin to begin.

Create a policy​

As a first step create a new policy to support our learning scenario.

  • In the EasyLife 365 Admin go to Policies on the main menu and select Distribution List.
  • Click Create to create a new policy and hit save once you filled out the sections below.

Card​

We will begin by configuring the basic details for the policy we want to create.

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You will notice that some sections are invalid, as indicated by a warning icon ⚠. The Save Changes button will remain inactive until all validation issues are resolved. In this case, the validation is highlighting required values that we have not yet supplied. We will proceed to complete the missing information.

  • In the Card section, set the Title to Learning Policy.
  • Enter a Description in the Description field.
  • As you fill out the details, data validation automatically checks if all required entries are completed. The warning icon on the Card section will no longer be displayed.
  • Set the policy to be active by checking the Active box and leave the Default box unchecked.

Owners​

We will now configure the minimum owner policy. This policy makes sure a distribution list has (at least) a specified number of owners.

  • In the navigation section on the left side, select Owners.
  • Enter the Notifications Email Address that will get alerted if a distribution list is left without owners.
  • Turn on the minimum owners policy by enabling the Enable policy toggle.
  • The Trigger for Minimum Owners is by default set to 2.
note

The Trigger for Minimum Owners can be edited on Distribution Lists. This value cannot be edited for Shared Mailboxes, Room Mailboxes and Equipment Mailboxes.

  • Click Reminders.
  • Set Number of reminders to 2 and Interval between reminders (days) to 1.
  • Click Actions.
  • Enter the Notifications Email Address that will get alerted if owners don't react to notification emails.

Confirmation​

We will now configure the confirmation policy. This policy will ask the owners of a resource to confirm that the resource is still in use after a given number of days.

  • In the navigation section on the left side, select Confirmation.
  • Turn on the confirmation policy by enabling the Enable policy toggle.
  • Set the Trigger for Interval (days) to 1.
  • Click Reminders.
  • Set Number of reminders to 2 and Interval between reminders (days) to 1.
  • Click Actions.
  • Choose the radio button Delete.
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This will cause the EasyLife 365 Mail Engine to delete this mailbox if no confirmation of continuing use is received from any of the Owners of this distribution list.

Access Review​

We will now configure the access review policy. This policy asks owners to review members and owners of the distribution list after a given number of days.

  • In the navigation section on the left side, select Access Review.
  • Turn on the access review policy by enabling the Enable policy toggle.
  • Set the Trigger for Interval (days) to 1.
  • Click Reminders.
  • Set Number of reminders to 2 and Interval between reminders (days) to 1.
  • Click Actions.
  • Choose the radio button None.
tip

When configuring the above policies, under Triggers, we set the trigger interval to 1. This will allow the EasyLife 365 Mail Engine to scan this distribution list daily which is suitable for testing purposes. However, in practice, you may want to allow longer intervals.

Template Policy​

For this Learning Guide we will not look at the template policy. To learn how the template policy works You can visit the following Learning Guide: template policy

Create a template​

After creating the policy we continue and create a new template for our learning distribution list.

  • In the EasyLife 365 Admin go to Templates on the main menu.
  • Select Distribution Lists.
  • Click Create to create a new template.

Card​

  • In the Card section, set the Title to Learning Template.
  • Enter a Description in the Description field.
  • As you fill out the details, data validation automatically checks if all required entries are completed. The warning icon on the Card section will no longer be displayed.
  • Choose a nice color for the card
  • Set the template to active by checking the Active box.
  • Leave the text box below Audience empty.

Policies​

  • Navigate to the Policies section on the left side.
  • Select the Learning Policy in the drop down.
  • A summary of the policy configuration will be displayed for your awareness.
  • Click Save changes to create the template.

Execute the learning guide​

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This part of the exercise is completed in the EasyLife 365 Mail App. Sign in to the EasyLife 365 Mail App to begin.

Now you can start with the following steps of the learning path.

Day One​

On Day One we create a new distribution list and remove an owner to make it non-compliant with our policies. This will allow us to see how the EasyLife 365 Mail Engine will notify of this non-compliance and allow us to rectify this.

Create a distribution list​

  • In the EasyLife 365 Mail App go to Create on the main menu.
  • Scroll to the Distribution Lists section.
  • Click the Learning Template we create in the previous exercise.
  • This will launch the distribution list creation wizard.
  • Complete the required information. Use values that you will remember as we will need to refer back to this distribution list.
  • Click Next to navigate to the Members and Owners step.
  • You have to add a second owner because the policy requires minimum of two owners.
  • On the Members and Owners step, select one additional user.
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You are already added as an owner. So you only need to select one additional owner. You will not be able to add a user more than once.

  • Change the role of the selected user to "Owner" in the dropdown.
  • Click Let's do it to queue the distribution list for creation.

The distribution list is created and should now appear under the Distribution Lists section. Please note that this may take a few minutes to complete the provisioning.

Remove an owner from the distribution list​

  • In the EasyLife 365 Mail App go to Distribution Lists on the main menu.
  • Wait until the Distribution List appears on this page. You may refresh the page a few times and use the name filter to aid you.
  • Click the distribution list you created.
  • Navigate to the Team section on the left.
  • Select the Owners tab and wait for the data to update.
  • Click on Edit.
  • Remove the second owner using the corresponding delete button in the permissions table.
  • Click Save to apply the changes.

At this stage, the distribution list is no longer compliant with the policies that we set up.

Your new distribution list is now created and ready to use in the Exchange Admin Center. Members can be added or removed later, and you can manage various settings for the distribution list as needed.

Day Two​

On Day Two we receive a notification from the EasyLife 365 Mail Engine and attempt to rectify the issue. The Owner Count policy marks the distribution list as not compliant because you removed the second owner.

  • Check the Notifications Email Address for notifications from EasyLife 365 Mail.
  • Identify the notification for assigning owners to our now non-compliant distribution list.
  • Use the button to add a second owner right there from the notification.

Day Three​

On Day Three we focus on the confirmation policy. The Confirmation policy marks the Distribution List as not compliant.

  • Check the Notifications Email Address for notifications from EasyLife 365 Mail.
  • Identify the corresponding notification for confirming the usage of our now non-compliant distribution list.
  • Leave it like this to trigger the confirmation policy action on the next policy scan cycle.

Day Four​

On Day Four we focus on the escalation actions taken by confirmation policy. The Confirmation policy marks the distribution list as non-compliant. On Day Three we received a notification with a request to confirm the usage of the distribution list. However, we chose to ignore this notification and did not action it. Our policy is configured to delete distribution lists that are not confirmed according to the policy configuration.

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The EasyLife 365 Mail engine removed the Distribution List Learning Distribution List.

  • In the EasyLife 365 Mail App go to Distribution Lists on the main menu.
  • Verify that the distribution list is no longer available in the distribution lists collection.

Cleanup​

Congratulations! You have completed the EasyLife 365 Mail Distribution List learning path. Please go back to the EasyLife 365 Admin and delete the Template Learning Distribution List Template and the policy Learning Policy.