Did your organization recently moved to Microsoft 365 and your users are wondering why are they missing their emails? Well, this could be because of a feature called Focused Inbox that is enabled by default in Microsoft 365 and unless you do not know how to use it, it is nothing but trouble.

Note: This feature has a lot of advantages than you can think of. It can really help you stay on top of things!

Focused Inbox is not meant to take control of your mail, but rather work with you to prioritize what is actionable for you. What lands in your Focused Inbox is determined by an understanding of the people you interact with often, and the content of the email itself (e.g., newsletters, machine generated mail, etc.). If you need to fine tune your Focused Inbox, just use the “Move to Focused” or “Move to Other” options.

You can refer to the below links to understand how to grant these permissions to a user who is required to perform the task of disabling Focused Inbox for the entire organization.

• Organization Management: Exchange 2013 Help | Microsoft Docs
• Records Management: Exchange 2013 Help | Microsoft Docs

• You will have to reach out to your Tenant’s Global Admin and request him to grant you access.
• Login to Microsoft 365 Admin Portal
• Expand the Users section and click on Active Users.
• Search for the user who needs to be granted the EXO Service Admin role and click on the user’s Display name.
• You will be presented with the user details panel.
• On the Accounts tab, you will see a section called Roles.
• Clicking on the Manage Roles option will present the Manage admin roles
• Click the Admin center access radio button and then select the Exchange Administrator option
• Click Save changes

The user will have to log out and log back in again so that the role change becomes effective.

Exchange Online PowerShell Module v1 (EXO V1) does not support Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). So, if the account that you are using for performing the action has MFA enabled, consider using Exchange Online PowerShell Module v2 (EXO V2).

• EXO V1 does not require any installation. All you need to do is connect and import the module using PowerShell commands (commands discussed later).
• Since EXO V2 requires an installation, it is always a good practice to check if the required module is installed or not using the below command:
  • Get-Module -ListAvailable -Name *Exch*
• If the EXO V2 module is installed, check what version is currently installed, you can run the below command:
  • Import-Module ExchangeOnlineManagement; Get-Module ExchangeOnlineManagement

At the time of writing this content, the latest version of the EXO V2 module was 2.0.4. You can refer to the Release Notes section of this article to get the version of the Current Release:

About the Exchange Online PowerShell V2 module | Microsoft Docs

As stated above, only Exchange Online PowerShell version v.2 (EXO V2) requires installation, to install the EXO V2 module for the first time, complete the following steps

• Install or update the PowerShellGet module as described in Installing PowerShellGet.
• Close and re-open the Windows PowerShell window
• Now you can use the Install-Module cmdlet to install the EXO V2 module from the PowerShell Gallery:
• In an elevated PowerShell window (all users):
  • Install-Module -Name ExchangeOnlineManagement
• When you are finished, enter Y to accept the license agreement.

If the module is already installed on your computer, you can run the command we shared above to see the version that is currently installed and update it to the latest version using the below command:

• Update-Module -Name ExchangeOnlineManagement

To uninstall the module, run one of the below command (in an elevated PowerShell window)

• Uninstall-Module -Name ExchangeOnlineManagement

• Ensure the CSV file is in the same folder where you run this PowerShell script from
• Below is the sample for the CSV file:

• Save the file as csv

You use PowerShell to turn Focused Inbox on or off for everyone in your organization.

• Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell (v1 or v2)
• You need to be assigned below RBAC permissions before you can perform this procedure:
  • Organization Management
  • Records Management
• Run the below command to get the current status:
  • Get-OrganizationConfig
• Check the value of FocusedInboxOn to view its current setting.
• Run the following cmdlet to turn Focused Inbox off.
  • Set-OrganizationConfig -FocusedInboxOn $false

Note: This change cannot be performed from the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.

Now that you have clarity on whether you are using the EXOV1 or EXO V2 PowerShell Module, it should be easy for you to decide which path to follow.

Before you run the script, please ensure you have met all the pre-requisites so that you get the desired outcome. After you confirm having met all the pre-requisites, copy and save the below script in your favourite script editor and save it as a AllUsers.ps1 file ensuring that the script and the CSV File are saved in the same location.

Before you run the script, please ensure you have met all the pre-requisites so that you get the desired outcome. After you confirm having met all the pre-requisites, copy and save the below script in your favourite script editor and save it as a AllUsers.ps1 file ensuring that the script and the CSV File are saved in the same location.

After we are done running the above script, we now need to verify if the focused inbox has been disabled for the users or not. In order to verify the same, run the below command and then Look for FocusedInboxOn to view its current setting:

Well, you now know that the Focused Inbox can be disabled at the Org level as well as for specific users. You should now be able to decide how you want to implement the change.

Configure Focused Inbox for everyone in your organization - Microsoft 365 admin | Microsoft Docs