How rules work

A rule says who becomes a contact and who receives them. It goes from a source to a recipient group. You manage rules under Rules. The map has two columns: From is the source group or contact folder, and To is the recipient group. The numbers from the latest run appear under each rule. You can have several rules, but not two with the same pair of groups.

The source (From)

When you click Add rule, you choose between two kinds of source under From.

A group. The members become contacts, for example all employees. Members of nested groups count too. Only active employees with a licence and a mailbox are included. Guests, accounts without a mailbox (such as meeting rooms) and external contacts in the group are left out, which is why the number can be lower than the size of the group. After a run, the numbers appear under each rule. Each employee gets the others in the group as contacts.

If some employees have no Microsoft 365 mailbox, for example in the warehouse or on the production floor, tick Include employees without a mailbox if they have a phone number. They are then added as a contact with name, company details and phone number, but no email address. Only those with a mobile or business number are added. An account that is blocked from signing in to Microsoft 365 counts as a leaver, and the contact is removed after the grace period. The dry run shows who is added.

Exclusion group (optional). Members of this group do not become contacts. Use it for service accounts, meeting rooms and others that should not end up on the phones.

A contact folder in a mailbox. The contacts in the folder are copied to the recipients, for example suppliers or IT support kept in a shared mailbox. Enter the mailbox’s email address and, if needed, the folder name. If you leave the folder empty, ModernSync uses the mailbox’s own Contacts folder. The portal asks you to confirm before it shares the folder. Use a shared mailbox for this, not an employee’s private contacts. The source mailbox itself is not changed. If the folder is deleted later, the rule stops changing anything, and the run says why.

The recipients (To)

Under To you pick the recipient group. The recipients are the members of that group who have a mailbox, including members of nested groups. Recipients who are disabled or unlicensed in Microsoft 365 get no contacts, and Overview tells you how many there are. Mailboxes lists every recipient and their status.

Under Where should the contacts go? you choose:

• In Contacts, which shows on the phone and in Outlook.
• In a subfolder, which shows in Outlook. The phone’s built-in contacts usually do not show subfolders.

The number next to the recipient group on the map counts the mailboxes that get the contacts. Members without an email address, disabled accounts, accounts without a licence and mailboxes above the trial limit are not counted. If the recipient group has 25 members and one of them has no licence, it says 24 mailboxes.

Why is someone missing?

Under Mailboxes you can search for a person by name or email address. For each rule, the answer shows whether the person becomes a contact for the recipients and whether they get the contacts themselves. If the answer is no, the reason is shown next to it, for example not a member of the source group, a guest, no mailbox, in the exclusion group, disabled (with the date the contact is removed), or above the trial limit. The lookup uses your groups in Microsoft 365 as they are right now. If several people match, search for the email address.

Editing a rule

Click Edit, make the change and click Save rule. The change applies from the next run, so make a test run first to see the numbers.

If you change the recipient group or the folder, the rule’s contacts are removed from the former recipients, or from the old folder, at the next real run. The same happens to a person you take out of the recipient group.

Deleting a rule

Click Delete and confirm with Delete rule. The rule’s contacts are removed from the recipients at the next real run. Overview shows a message until the cleanup has run. Contacts the users created themselves are not affected.