Manage Shared Voicemail for Auto Attendants and Call Queues
This article describes how to configure and manage Shared Voicemail for Auto Attendants and Call Queues. Shared Voicemail is a specialized type of voicemail that allows multiple users to access a single voicemail inbox. Shared Voicemail is delivered to a group, enabling any member of that group to access the message, whereas personal voicemail is sent to a single user, allowing only that individual to access the message automatically.
Shared Voicemail integrates with Microsoft 365 Groups and can be accessed in Outlook or through the Calls section in a Microsoft Teams channel associated with a group. Although Shared Voicemail can also connect to a distribution list or a mail-enabled security group, we recommend using a Microsoft 365 Group. For a comparison of the available options, refer to the following table:
| Shared Voicemail | Microsoft 365 Groups | Distribution groups | Mail-enabled security groups |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visible in Outlook/Exchange | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Visible in Teams | Yes1 | No | No |
1 Only if Microsoft 365 group is connected to a Call Queue via a Microsoft 365 group associated channel.
With a Microsoft 365 group, Shared Voicemails are delivered to the group's associated folder. In contrast, when using a distribution list or a mail-enabled security group, each user receives a copy of the voicemail in their individual Outlook Inbox.
Your users can receive Shared Voicemail only through the redirection logic from Auto Attendants or Call Queues. For more information about Auto Attendants and Call Queues, see Plan for Teams Auto attendants and Call queues.
For information about personal voicemail, see Set up Cloud Voicemail.
Prerequisites
To manage Shared Voicemail, you must configure either a Microsoft 365 group, a distribution list, or a mail-enabled security group. We recommend using a Microsoft 365 group. This article focuses on this option.
If your organization plans to view and manage Shared Voicemails in Microsoft Teams chats or other applications, make sure the Microsoft 365 group you're using has Teams support. Shared Voicemails that are stored in Teams-supported groups are accessible via Microsoft Teams.
Both private and public groups can be used with Shared Voicemail. However, if a group is public, anyone in your organization can get access the group and its associated information, including voicemails.
There are several ways to create Microsoft 365 groups. We recommend one of the following methods:
Create a Microsoft 365 group in the Microsoft 365 admin center - Ensure that the group has both a mailbox and Teams support enabled.
Create a Microsoft 365 group in Outlook - Outlook groups have a mailbox enabled by default, but they might lack Teams support. For more information, see Create a group in Outlook.
Create a Microsoft 365 group in Microsoft Teams - Teams-based groups might have their mailbox hidden by default. To make the mailbox visible, use the Set-UnifiedGroup cmdlet with the
-HiddenFromExchangeClientsEnabledparameter to make a mailbox visible.Set-UnifiedGroup -Identity <GUID> -HiddenFromExchangeClientsEnabled:$falseFor more information about creating a group in Teams, see Microsoft 365 Groups and Microsoft Teams.
If you select a non-Teams supported Microsoft 365 group, then your organization can only manage voicemails addressed to this group only in Outlook.
For more information about Microsoft 365 groups, see Overview of Microsoft 365 Groups for administrators
Configure Shared Voicemail
As an administrator, you can configure Shared Voicemail for both Auto Attendants and Call Queues. As mentioned in the Prerequisites, we recommend using Microsoft 365 groups for these setups to ensure seamless integration with Shared Voicemail.
Only members of the designated Microsoft 365 group can access its associated Shared Voicemail. Each Shared Voicemail is linked to a single Microsoft 365 group.
To prevent the oversharing of information, each specific Call Queue or Auto Attendant should have its own Microsoft 365 group for Shared Voicemail. If you configure call redirection so that multiple Call Queues with different agents share a common Shared Voicemail group, every user in that group has permission to manage voicemails. This configuration can inadvertently lead to oversharing sensitive information. For this reason, we recommend creating a separate Shared Voicemail group for each individual Call Queue or Auto Attendant.
For more information, see Manage your call queue and auto attendant settings in Microsoft Teams.
Auto Attendants
For Auto Attendants, you can set up redirection rules to forward calls to a Shared Voicemail. For example, you might want to configure a rule to forward out-of-office hours calls to Shared Voicemail or to forward calls within a certain category directly to Shared Voicemail.
For Auto Attendant calls that are sent to Shared Voicemail, you can enable or suppress a system greeting. Custom greetings aren't available yet for Auto Attendants.
For more information about Auto Attendants, see Set up a Microsoft Teams Auto attendant.
Call Queues
Administrators or Authorized users of a Call Queue can set up custom Shared Voicemail greetings for the following features:
- Call overflow
- Call timeout
- No agents
You can also turn off custom greetings for Call Queues. Avoid including any special characters in the greeting messages of Shared Voicemail.
For more information about creating greetings for Call Queues, see manage-voice-applications-policies.
For more information about redirecting Call Queues to Shared Voicemail, see Call queue call exception handling and Additional messaging on Call queue call exception handling.
Location of Shared Voicemails
Shared Voicemails are accessible in both Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Teams, although the Teams interface currently offers a more limited user experience.
Microsoft Outlook
In Outlook, Shared Voicemails are stored either in the Microsoft 365 group's folder or in the Inbox, depending on the group type. For a Microsoft 365 group, users can find Shared Voicemails in the group's associated folder. For a distribution list or mail-enabled security group, a copy of each Shared Voicemail is delivered to every user's Inbox. Personal voicemails are typically found in user's Inbox or, in older versions of Outlook, under the Voice mail Search Folder.
Voicemails in Outlook are essentially regular emails that contain specific voicemail data - an audio file attachment with the recorded message and message transcription. All voicemails are categorized with the type Voicemail, which enables you to apply Outlook rules specifically to this message type. For example, you can create a rule to move all emails with the Voicemail type to a separate folder. The standard functionalities available for regular emails—such as deleting, marking as read or unread, applying message protection settings, categorizing, and flagging—are also available for voicemails.
For a more accurate automatic summary of voicemails using Outlook Copilot, consider organizing all voicemails in a separate folder so that you can prompt Copilot to summarize only new messages in that specific folder.
For more information about organizing emails, setting rules, categories, flags, or reminders in Outlook, see the following articles:
- Set categories, flags, or reminders
- Organize email by using folders in Outlook
- Set up rules in Outlook
Microsoft Teams
In Microsoft Teams, Shared Voicemails are located under the Calls section of the Microsoft 365 group's associated Teams channel, while personal voicemails appear in your personal Calls tab. You can only view Shared Voicemails that are forwarded by a Call Queue connected to the Microsoft 365 Group channel, and the Call Queue's Microsoft 365 group must match the Shared Voicemail's Microsoft 365 group.