# Providing Service Accounts Access to Mailboxes in Exchange Online (Through Azure Active Directory)

Applies to: Microsoft 365 with Exchange, User Mailbox

In an Microsoft 365 with Exchange environment, you must configure the Exchange Online service account to discover, archive, clean up, and restore data for user mailboxes, group mailboxes, and all public folders.

## Before You Begin

The Microsoft 365 with Exchange (Exchange Online) administrator account must have the following service accounts configured:

- An Exchange Online service account, which must meet the following requirements:

  - Must be an online mailbox or a shared mailbox.

  - Must be created in Azure AD only.

  - Must have either the Exchange administrator role or the global administrator role assigned so that the administrator can discover and back up Microsoft 365 group mailboxes. For more information, see Assign admin roles in Microsoft 365 on the Microsoft website.

  - If you use more than 1 access node, the service account must have local log on rights.

  - For public folders, you must have owner permissions at the root level and the sub-folder level. Convert the shared mailbox to a user mailbox, assign the owner permissions, and then convert the mailbox back to a shared mailbox.

  - For backups and restores of public folders, the service account must have impersonation and view-only permissions.

  - For the Exchange Online service account, a license is not required. Convert the user mailbox to a shared mailbox, and remove the Microsoft 365 license for the Exchange Online service account.

- If you use more than 1 access node, a local system account (Windows user) is required and must meet the following requirements:

  - Must be a member of the local administrator group on the access node servers.

  - Must be a domain user.

  - Must have full read and write permissions to the shared job results directory.

## Procedure

1. Open Windows PowerShell and create a remote PowerShell session to Microsoft 365 with Exchange.

2. To assign view-only recipient permissions, type the following command:

        New-RoleGroup -Name "$[ExchangeOnlineBackupRoleGroup]" -Roles "$[View-Only Recipients]" -Members $[serviceaccount1,serviceaccount2]

   where:

   - ExchangeOnlineBackupRoleGroup is a unique name for the new role group.

   - serviceaccount1 and serviceaccount2 are Exchange Online service accounts.

Note

In Modern authentication, service account is required only for mailbox discovery and license computation and not for backup and restore operations.

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