Solution · Shared mailbox
Shared mailbox contacts on every smartphone
Many companies keep customers, suppliers and partners in a shared mailbox: a contact folder that the whole team sees and edits in desktop Outlook. On the smartphone this model breaks. The Outlook app shows only your own contacts, and caller ID does not know the customers. GALYNSKI takes the folder as a source and writes its contacts daily into the mailboxes of every employee who needs them.
The problem: shared contacts stay at the desk
A shared mailbox can be added to Outlook for iOS and Android; Microsoft names Exchange Online on both sides as the only requirement. Mail and calendar then work. The contact folder of the shared mailbox does not appear in the app, and a contact folder shared by a colleague stays invisible too. An administrator describes it in Microsoft Q&A like this: “… they can see their own contacts, but none of the contacts from the shared list … The experience is exactly the same on Android and iOS.” (23 January 2024). As early as 2019, when Outlook mobile gained shared mailboxes, Tony Redmond noted that access to their contacts is not provided for (office365itpros.com, 7 June 2019).
What people try instead
| Option | What it does | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|
| Add the shared mailbox in Outlook mobile | Mail and calendar of the mailbox on the phone. | The contact folder is not shown; caller ID stays empty. |
| Share the contact folder with colleagues | Visible in desktop Outlook. | Not in Outlook for iOS and Android. |
| Export as CSV, import per person | A one-off state on the device. | Every change has to be exported again; old entries linger. |
| Everyone keeps their own customer contacts | No tool needed. | Ten versions of the same customer, none of them complete. |
| Your own script | Copies the folder into all mailboxes via Microsoft Graph. | Maintenance for changes, deletions and errors; Microsoft has been blocking EWS-based scripts gradually since 1 October 2026, and entirely from April 2027 at the latest. |
If the contacts currently live in a public folder, the shared mailbox is the obvious place to move them. How the move works is described in the guide Replace public folder contacts in Exchange Online.
How GALYNSKI distributes the contact folder
- Connect. One-off admin consent in the tenant. GALYNSKI reads the contact folder of the shared mailbox via Microsoft Graph with application permissions. No account and no password for the shared mailbox.
- Choose the source. Source “Folder in a mailbox”, choose the mailbox and up to ten folders, such as “Customers” and “Suppliers”. Recipients: all users or specific groups.
- Nightly run. Every recipient’s mailbox gets its own folder with a name of your choice. The contacts are transferred with name, company, phone numbers, email addresses and postal address.
- Onto the device. The folder appears by itself in Outlook on the computer and in the Outlook app. The contacts reach the contacts app and caller ID through the Outlook app: on Android with “Sync Contacts”, on the iPhone with “Save Contacts”. No extra app, no MDM profile. More in the guide Company contacts on Android.
- One direction. The shared mailbox stays the only source. Whoever changes or deletes a customer there sees the change on all devices after the next run. GALYNSKI never writes back into the source.
Typical uses
- Sales and field service with one central customer address book on every company phone.
- Trades and service companies with suppliers, subcontractors and emergency services for the technicians.
- Law firms and practices with clients, referrers or partners for one specific group only.
- Customers as their own address book next to the colleagues, or together with them in one folder. See Multiple address books.
Data protection and operations
- The contracting party is SSIG-IT GmbH in Germany; the DPA (with English text), sub-processors and technical measures are public. Hosted in the EU.
- Protection against mass deletion: if a large part of the source suddenly disappears, GALYNSKI stops the affected address book before a single contact is changed, and reports the reason.
- Every run is in the dashboard with counts and notes. The report arrives by email when something changed or an error occurred. Which data GALYNSKI processes is set out in the documentation Data protection.
Price
4.00 € per user per month, or 36 € per user per year on the annual plan. From 51 users 3.60 € or 33 €, from 251 users 3.20 € or 30 €, each plus VAT. Counted are the users who receive contacts. All prices on the pricing page.
Frequently asked questions
Does the shared mailbox need a login or a GALYNSKI licence?
No. GALYNSKI reads the folder with application permissions via Microsoft Graph, without a password and without an account of its own. Only the recipients are counted; the shared mailbox itself needs no GALYNSKI licence.
Can employees edit the distributed contacts on their phones?
Locally, yes, but on the next run GALYNSKI aligns the folder with the source again. Changes belong in the shared mailbox; then they reach everyone.
How large may the contact folder be?
The limit is 10,000 contacts per source. A larger folder is reported in the run and not silently truncated.
Several folders or several shared mailboxes?
One source covers up to ten contact folders of one mailbox. A second shared mailbox is another source, in the same or in its own address book.
What happens on cancellation?
The contacts are no longer updated and remain for another 14 days. After that GALYNSKI automatically removes the folder it created from the mailboxes; the date is announced by email beforehand. The shared mailbox stays unchanged.