Email files to Sharepoint site in O365

Question

Thank you in advance for your answers/help.

My organization is starting to use sharepoint to help us automate processes of posting files in a common place for different departments to use when needed. One thing we want to do is utilize the email feature to post files (pdf's, docx., etc.) to a sharepoint page so that another departments can monitor it and then use the files to finish the rest of their processes.

So managers from various parts of the company email a PDF with a request or information to an accounts payable page, where the AP team then receives the info and stamps it complete / incomplete, and whoever needs to can see the information and its status.

We are unsure if this is a feature that will work with the sharepoint for O365. We have heard that it is possible, but it's a different process or setup than it would be for the on-prem version of sharepoint. Any info or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, thank you again.

-Sam

Answer 1

SharePoint online doesn't support email enabled libraries, like on-prem SharePoint farms. However, Flow supports copying email attachments to SharePoint libraries.

One potential issue with this is that this will require an actual user mailbox to be used. You could certainly set up an account for this purpose, but it's an added complication to know about.

The template for this workflow is here.

As an alternative, you could create an Office 365 Group, which gets a distribution list. Everyone in the group would be able to view all messages sent to the group, though the attachments would stay in the mailbox, and wouldn't get transferred to a SharePoint library. To my knowledge, there is no Flow action that yet works with Office 365 Group mailboxes, though if you have access to a developer, you could write code that transfers attachments to a library based on some sort of schedule.