If you’ve ever setup Distribution mailboxes in Cisco Unity Connection, you’ll know its super simple with just creating the Distribution Mailbox, then adding Members. The Greeting can also be pushed out to several Distribution Mailboxes. However configuring the same feature in Microsoft Exchange is slightly different.

MS Exchange doesn’t support configuring an extension for a Distribution Group Mailbox. What needs to be done is configure a single user mailbox, and yes you will need to create an AD User as well. Enable Unified Messaging for this user and allocate an Extension Number.

Create a Distribution Group Mailbox with the appropriate members.

Next we need to configure email forwarding for the Single User to direct all emails to the Distribution Mailbox.

Generic Greetings cannot be uploaded. So you will need to (via OWA) record the greeting for each Single User separately.

Quick break down:

1. Create AD User and mailbox
2. Enable UM for User
3. Create Distribution Group Mailbox
4. Add members to the Distribution Group Mailbox
5. Setup email forward (don’t leave a local copy) from the AD User to the Distribution Group Mailbox.
6. Log into OWA for each AD User and record a Voice Greeting.