Using a fake vs. real email account for outgoing notifications

Question

We have an implementation of SharePoint with over 2000 users. For all notifications we are using a fake administrator email account for the From field. eg)[email protected] - no actual email account.

This works fine in most cases as we don't need to receive email to this account.

We are having a problem though with Workflow notifications not going through to Active Directory Distribution Lists if the option to allow emails from outside of the organization is disabled - since the email account doesn't actually exist. We do not want to enable this option in our organization.

Just wondering if there is any risk or impact of creating a real email account for outgoing notifications. I don't know the rational for the original fake one as our previous administrator is no longer at the organization.

Answer 1

You can definitely use a valid email account for sending emails. It won't be too bad either.

Your users could reply to alerts now, so someone may be getting inundated with emails. Not sure if this is ideal in your organization and current governance. This may not be a big deal, as no one thinks to reply, but someone may notice a valid email account on there.

You identified a big plus for using a legit account in that you can know what emails are erroring out. Not just distro lists, but if a user leaves the company and that email address becomes inactive, the valid email would receive delivery errors. Then you could take action from there

I can't think of any other large impacts using a valid email account