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This article describes various admin-managed tasks for the Newsletters feature in Microsoft Outlook.
Manage access to Newsletters
Outlook Newsletters is available to users in your organization who have the following items:
- A valid Microsoft Entra ID account
- An Exchange Online mailbox
- Access to SharePoint in your organization’s Microsoft 365 tenant in any version of Microsoft 365 and Office 365 (enterprise, education, or business)
Note: Exchange Online standalone plans that don't include SharePoint aren't supported for authoring newsletter content. Also, support isn't available for Government cloud environments.
As an admin, you can manage user access to the Newsletters feature by using the OwaMailboxPolicy.OutlookNewslettersAccessLevel property. This property can be set by using the Set-OwaMailboxPolicy cmdlet in Exchange Management Shell.
You can assign one of the following values to the property:
ReadWrite - Users have full authoring permissions to create pages and newsletters in the Outlook Newsletters module.
ReadOnly - Users can read newsletters and browse pages in the Outlook Newsletters module.
NoAccess - Users can't access the Outlook Newsletters module in the new Outlook for Windows or Outlook on the Web. They can still read newsletters that are sent or forwarded to them in email messages unless Microsoft Purview Information Protection labels are used to restrict access to the email messages that are generated when newsletters are published.
The default value is set as Undefined if you don’t set a value for the property explicitly. As of General Availability (GA), if the policy property’s value is left as Undefined, the service defaults to ReadWrite.
The following example provides the commands to implement this phased rollout by using Exchange Online PowerShell.
# Set the org-wide default OWA mailbox policy to ReadOnly for Newsletters
Set-OwaMailboxPolicy -Identity "OwaMailboxPolicy-Default" -OutlookNewslettersAccessLevel ReadOnly
# Create a pilot policy that allows authoring
New-OwaMailboxPolicy -Name "OwaMailboxPolicy-NewslettersPilot"
Set-OwaMailboxPolicy -Identity "OwaMailboxPolicy-NewslettersPilot" -OutlookNewslettersAccessLevel ReadWrite
# (Optional) Assign the pilot policy to specific users
Set-CASMailbox -Identity user@contoso.com -OwaMailboxPolicy "OwaMailboxPolicy-NewslettersPilot"
Manage Newsletter features
The publishers for individual newsletters can manage features such as reader reactions and comments while admins can manage them for the entire organization.
Reactions and comments
Outlook Newsletters include features that let readers engage with published content. Readers can react to individual sections of a newsletter or to the entire newsletter, similar to how they can react to a typical Outlook email message. They can also add comments by using the controls at the end of each section.
Authors can disable the engagement features when they publish a newsletter in Outlook Newsletters. However, administrators can disable the features for an entire organization by using the OwaMailboxPolicy.OutlookNewslettersReactions property.
Newsletter recommendations
By default, Newsletter editions include recommendations to other content that is published through Outlook Newsletters. This action encourages increased readership in the organization. Such recommendations are included in the footer of published newsletter editions. Authors can disable these recommendations for each individual newsletter edition during publishing. Alternatively, administrators can disable the recommendations for either a set of users or the entire organization by using the OwaMailboxPolicy.OutlookNewslettersShowMore property.
Manage storage locations for newsletters
Outlook Newsletters stores its online content in SharePoint Embedded containers inside your organization's Microsoft 365 tenant. The email messages that are generated when newsletter editions are published are stored in the recipients' mailboxes. Copies of the same email messages are also available in the Sent Items folder in the sender’s mailbox.
SharePoint Embedded provides application-managed, API-only storage so that your Newsletters data remains in your tenant boundary and is governed by your organization's policies. In the SharePoint Admin Center, admins who have the SharePoint Embedded Administrator role can view and manage the containers that are used by Outlook Newsletters.
Outlook Newsletters stores the following information about newsletters in the associated SharePoint Embedded container in your tenant:
- Newsletter editions (including published and draft versions)
- Uploaded assets (currently images only)
- Comments about editions
These items remain in the container after publication. This design enables authors to revisit, revise, or repurpose content later.
[!IMPORTANT]
Outlook Newsletters doesn't currently delete editions or uploaded assets automatically after publication. If your organization has retention requirements, use Microsoft Purview retention policies to manage the lifecycle of this content. Because the content is stored in your tenant, Microsoft Purview capabilities such as retention, sensitivity labels, and eDiscovery apply to newsletter content the same as they do to other files that are backed up to SharePoint.
Supported file types
Outlook Newsletters supports uploading images as embedded content in newsletter editions. Other file types, such as video or documents, aren't supported at this time.
Troubleshoot issues in Newsletters
As an admin, you have access to various tools to diagnose and resolve issues with Outlook newsletters.
Admin view
Outlook Newsletters includes a simple administrator console that’s accessible through the Admin link in the navigation panel. This Admin view appears only for users in your organization who have the ExchangeServiceAdmin, SharePoint Embedded Administrator, or GlobalServiceAdmin role assigned.
You can use the Admin view to see the Newsletter pages that are in your organization and also see the page owners. The Admin view also includes a filter to identify Newsletter pages that have no owners. Loss of ownership might occur if, for example, the page owner leaves your organization or the page has only one owner although your organization requires multiple owners for shared resources.
If a newsletter has ownership issues, select the name of the page in the Admin view to see its page view and resolve the issues.
Audit logging
As an administrator, you can use the audit-logging tools from Microsoft Purview to monitor and audit Newsletter activities in your tenant. The logging tools allow you to filter, search, export, and analyze the log data for various newsletter events.
To access the logging tools, follow these steps:
- Navigate to the Microsoft Purview portal.
- Select Audit from the main menu.
- Under Workloads, select SharePoint, and apply relevant filters, such as the date and time range, users, and so on. Then, select Search.
- Wait several minutes for the search to finish. The required time depends on the volume of logs that are pulled. The operation runs in the background.
- When the logs become available, they're arranged in a table. Select a row in the table to view more details in a side panel, including the application for which the event was recorded. For events that occur in Outlook Newsletters, the value of ApplicationDisplayName is OutlookNewsletters.
You can export the logs to a .csv file by using the Export button. In the exported results, records of events that occurred in Outlook Newsletters have a field within AppAccessContext that's labeled as ClientAppName. The value of this field is OutlookNewsletters.
If a logging event refers to a SiteCollection, this object type corresponds to a newsletter. Logs that refer to a folder correspond to an edition under the parent newsletter. Events that relate to specific files correspond to specific sections of an edition or images within the edition.
Legal hold and discovery
Administrators who have the SharePoint Embedded Administrator and Compliance Data Administrator roles can use Microsoft Purview to perform an eDiscovery search. They can search for Outlook Newsletters content in one of two locations:
- The Inbox and Sent Items folders in the mailbox
Received newsletters appear as email messages in recipients' Inboxes, and sent newsletters appear in the Sent Items folder. Newsletters function the same as any other email message does. Therefore, administrators can use Purview tools to search for these messages in the same manner as they would search for any other email message.
- SharePoint Embedded
Draft Newsletters and comments about Newsletters are stored in SharePoint Embedded. To find this content, select Sites as the data source.
As a best practice, periodically review active containers and storage usage for draft, received, and sent Newsletters in the SharePoint admin center. Use Microsoft Purview labeling and retention so that newsletter content follows your organization’s data lifecycle policies.