I've been trying to figure out how to create a distribution list containing personal email addresses for all our staff. This could be done by adding each staff member as a mail contact with their personal email address and adding those mail contacts to a distribution group – but it seems silly to have both a user and a mail contact for each staff member.
Active Directory Online has a field for "alternative email address". Is there a way to use either that or a custom user field to populate a distribution group and then have email sent to that group be forwarded to it's members alternate address/the address in a custom field for each user?
Best Answer
Some alternative approaches I can think of:
Enable forward rules on the mailbox, you can specify that only mail from certain senders will be forwarded and you can still keep a copy in the mailbox.
Transport rules could be configured to forward messages to alternate addresses.
Use MS Flow or Zappier to create a workflow that forwards messages to personal addresses.
Setup a listserv, or sign up for a free mail chimp account and manage contacts there.