I work at a company that was recently acquired, and we have about 300 Microsoft 365 Business Basic licenses that are about to expire. Management has chosen not to renew these licenses, but the current users rely on Entra ID joined devices. We're still in the process of migrating these devices to our new tenant. Our migration steps involve hash file extraction, factory resets, and Autopilot enrollment, and most other services like mail and OneDrive have already been moved.
My main concern is whether users can switch to Shared Mailboxes and still access their Entra ID joined devices for sign-in. We've tested this setup with a new Shared Mailbox, and it worked fine so far, but I'm worried about the long-term implications. Any thoughts?
5 Answers
You can technically do this, but it opens up a can of worms regarding compliance and security. It's better to get the standard licenses until you can complete the migration. Users don’t necessarily need a license just to sign into devices—only for accessing specific services.
Good points about shared mailboxes needing licenses after a certain size. Keep in mind that any litigation hold will vanish if you remove the license. Just double-check, did your tests ensure no licensed users have access to that shared mailbox?
Shared mailboxes are meant to be disabled for direct sign-in, so it's technically a bad idea. Using them for this can create issues, especially since there's no MFA involved, which raises security concerns.
Even if it works now, I wouldn’t recommend it. It probably goes against Microsoft's terms of service, and it definitely isn't something they officially support. You might run into problems down the line.
I wouldn’t make this a regular practice. I encountered similar issues with signing into SMBs before. Be ready for potential problems, especially when everyone is on holiday and you hit a snag.
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