Microsoft is the reigning leader in business collaboration and productivity. Over 400,000 companies worldwide use Microsoft products and services. Over 100 million monthly active users use SharePoint. Microsoft is a leader in the provision of content services platforms that focuses on the following key areas:
All these products and services are now integrated and offered as a unified service called Microsoft 365 (earlier known as Microsoft Office 365 or Office 365). With Microsoft 365, Microsoft has designed a subscription model that allows organizations to provide these services to their employees. It comes with different plans tailored equally well for large, medium, and small companies.
In this chapter, we will first take a closer look at the infrastructure and evolution of Microsoft services. Then it will make sense to see the different plans and licensing models available to us. Once you’re aware of the licensing, we can learn a bit more about the apps and interfaces of Microsoft 365. Finally, at the end of this chapter, we will be ready to encounter the many recipes found in this cookbook.
In today’s digital landscape, the landscape of business operations and data management has undergone a significant transformation. The days of maintaining in-house data centers with their labyrinthine server rooms, brimming with hardware and requiring constant vigilance, have given way to a more efficient and cost-effective solution: cloud computing.
Traditionally, businesses established these data centers to safeguard their most critical and sensitive information. These centers needed to be fortified with both physical and virtual security measures, making them formidable fortresses against potential threats. Along with security, significant ongoing costs came into play, including server licenses, hardware expenses, the substantial power needed to keep servers running, and the consistent maintenance of the facility itself. As a safeguard, many companies also invested in disaster recovery centers to ensure business continuity in case the primary data center failed.
While the concept of having a private data center, offering full control, might seem appealing, the practicality of maintaining such an infrastructure has proven to be increasingly challenging. Cybersecurity threats loom large, and protecting applications and data from potential attacks demands a level of expertise and resources that many organizations find hard to maintain. From a financial perspective, it’s not cost-effective to keep servers running continuously, especially during periods of low application usage, such as local holiday seasons. Moreover, the burden of maintaining these servers 24/7, including applying patches, installing updates, and ensuring smooth operation, necessitates dedicated staff.
This is where cloud computing and hosting solutions have come to the rescue. The cloud offers scalable and flexible resources, reducing the need for heavy capital investment in hardware and security infrastructure. It allows businesses to pay for what they use, making it cost-effective, and cloud providers take care of the bulk of maintenance, updates, and security. Businesses can now focus on innovation, agility, and their core operations, leaving the technical intricacies to the cloud experts. The transition from traditional data centers to cloud computing has been a game-changer for companies of all sizes, offering a more secure, efficient, and cost-effective approach to data management and IT infrastructure. The term cloud refers to the infrastructure and/or services that are hosted and maintained by a provider and that can be accessed over the internet. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are some of the well-known cloud providers, but there are certainly many more that provide various cloud services. There are primarily three service models that cloud providers offer:
The journey of Microsoft’s productivity suite started in the 80s when it was first introduced by Bill Gates as Microsoft Office, with three applications: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Since then, Office applications have captured the corporate world and home users alike. Anyone who has ever used a PC has had some experience with Microsoft Office at some point. It is hard to imagine a world without Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. These applications have transformed the world since the day they were launched.
While one team in Microsoft was busy improving the already popular Office suite of applications, another team was busy shaping an enterprise-scale collaboration and content management platform called SharePoint. This platform offers online document storage and enables collaboration between teams. In addition, and since its days of inception, SharePoint has been built to be a highly extensible and customizable platform that allows developers and non-developers alike to extend its capabilities by building business solutions on top of it.
SharePoint was initially released as a standalone application for installation on a server (there are several companies that still use it on-premises) before becoming available on the cloud as SharePoint Online and as a member of the Microsoft 365 family.
Advancements in SharePoint have given birth to other technologies and tools that have now evolved into fully featured products themselves. The following are just some of those products:
Yet another module is Viva Insights, which focuses on your productivity by providing personalized insights about your emails, meeting schedules, calls, and chats. To learn more about Viva, check out two of the eBook chapters: Chapter 19, Viva Insights, and Chapter 20, Viva Learning.
If you flick to the last pages, you won’t find any chapters on Viva. That’s because these chapters are part of the online eBook that comes with this book! Going ahead, any references to chapters numbered 13 or higher are referring to the eBook.
Over the years, Microsoft has made other strategic acquisitions, such as Yammer and Mover, to consolidate its Microsoft 365 offering. They were soon joined by other online services, such as Stream, Planner, Sway, To Do, and so on.
Hopefully, that provides you with some context on how Microsoft 365 evolved. The next section explains why Microsoft 365 is right for any organization.
Microsoft 365 is a SaaS and PaaS offering by Microsoft. It is a collection of several products, services, and platforms, each tailored for a specific use case. Microsoft 365 applications can be accessed online at www.office.com. In addition to online applications, it also lets you download the license-based client version of certain applications, such as Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), OneDrive, Teams, and so on.
Moving to Microsoft 365 provides you with the following benefits:
Since these are very highly specialized areas, focused on the administrative side of Microsoft 365, we have not covered the topics in this book. If you are an administrator and implementing Microsoft 365 for your organization, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with these areas. You can read more about Microsoft 365 compliance features here: https://packt.link/M365-compliance. You can read more about Microsoft 365 security features here: https://packt.link/M365-security.
Adopting Office 365 offers many advantages, but at the same time, it takes a huge effort to find the right balance of cost and features for your organization.
Some licenses provide you with access to a bundle of services or apps while there are individual service plans for a specific app (like Power Apps, Power Automate, etc.).
Microsoft 365 has several subscription plans for the following entities:
You get access to a set of applications in Microsoft 365 based on the subscription plan assigned to you by your organization. To get access to other applications, you can either ask for your administrator to upgrade you to a higher plan or assign you a license for that specific application. We have mentioned the license requirements in the Getting started section of each recipe.
The Microsoft 365 plans get updated from time to time. You can check the plans by browsing to https://www.office.com/ and looking under the Products menu in the top navigation or referring to this page: https://packt.link/M365-plans.
Microsoft 365 comprises the following key applications and services (in alphabetical order):
With that introduction, let’s jump right into the service itself.
Microsoft 365 uses a single sign-in for all its apps and services. The initial sign-in page for Microsoft 365 can vary slightly depending on the device that you are signing in from, and the app that you are signing in to. However, you will see a consistent Sign in option on all such apps and devices. For example, the initial sign-in page when you use a browser to sign in to Microsoft 365 through its landing page at www.office.com looks like this:
Figure 1.1: Microsoft 365 Sign in link
This Microsoft support article walks you through the login experience when signing in from apps on various devices:
The login experience becomes consistent after you click the Sign in button. Clicking this button will first prompt you for an email ID. For your work or school subscription, this will be your corresponding work or school email ID. If you have a personal Microsoft account, then this will be your personal email ID.
For work or school accounts, entering the email ID and clicking Next will take you to your organization’s sign-in page, where you will need to enter your usual password for your organization. Then click Sign in again. Note that you may be asked for more information here depending on whether your organization has configured additional security.
If you are navigating to one of the Microsoft 365 services from the browser, you will also be asked if you would like to Stay signed in?. Confirming Yes to this prompt will mean that you will not need to sign in again every time you access an app or service using the same browser. You can also select Don’t show this again to reduce the number of times you are prompted to sign in. Please be sure to do this only on devices that belong to you and are not shared with others.
That’s it! You are now ready to benefit from all the Microsoft 365 apps and services using this one sign-in. Next, we will explore the various components of the Microsoft 365 user interface in a bit more detail.
Microsoft 365 comes with a very simple and intuitive user interface. You are presented with a landing page that looks like this when you first log in to the Microsoft 365 home page at www.office.com:
Figure 1.2: Microsoft 365 landing page
Let’s look at the various sections of this page in a bit more detail.
The suite bar appears at the top of all Microsoft 365 apps. The suite bar has the following links:
Figure 1.3: Microsoft 365 suite bar
Figure 1.4: Accessing apps
The Settings menu is represented by the gear icon. The settings icon lets you change your personal preferences, including your notification settings and your password for Microsoft 365, as shown in the following screenshot:
Figure 1.5: Update personal preferences
You can update the following from here:
Further, the settings panel is context-aware, meaning that the settings that you see in this panel will depend on the Microsoft 365 workload or app within which you are working. For example, when you are viewing the settings panel from within a page in SharePoint, you will see settings that are relevant to that specific page or area in SharePoint. We will cover the settings for individual apps separately in the chapters for these apps.
While the header consistently appears across all the Microsoft 365 workloads, the content for the individual apps varies depending on the type of app. The Microsoft 365 home page contains the following sections (from top to bottom).
The Install Office option in the top right-hand corner lets you install Office applications (such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) on your machine. This link is visible only if your subscription plan lets you install Office applications.
Figure 1.6: Microsoft 365 landing page components
The Recommended section displays all the documents that might be relevant to you. Microsoft 365 uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to create a personalized list for each user based on the projects that you are working on and the people you are working with.
Figure 1.7: Recommended results
The quick access bar lets you add one or more content filters. Content filters let you refine your content based on metadata. It comes with four standard filters: All, Recently opened, Shared, and Favorites.
The Recently opened link displays the documents in descending order of the last accessed date. This feature is very useful because it lets you start working on documents in order of when you last accessed or updated them.
Figure 1.8: Recently opened documents
The Shared view displays the documents that have been shared with you by your colleagues.
Figure 1.9: Shared documents
Toward the bottom of quick access, you will find the See all My Content link, which lets you expand your search and filter on specific content using the filters on the left.
Figure 1.10: Document refinement panel
Microsoft 365 is a very powerful platform, but with great power comes great responsibility. The Microsoft 365 admin center lets you manage various aspects of the platform. Only designated administrators in your organization can access the admin center. They can access it through the admin app after they log in to www.office.com.
The following screenshot shows the landing screen of the Microsoft 365 admin center:
Figure 1.11: Microsoft 365 admin center
You can perform the following actions from the Microsoft 365 admin center:
Since this book is focused on using the different workloads of Microsoft 365, discussing admin capabilities is beyond the scope of this book. However, although the book doesn’t cover portal administration recipes, it is good to know about the various roles available in Microsoft 365. We will cover this next.
Microsoft 365 has various administrator roles, each specific to the nature of the work that the admin is involved in. These roles can be divided into three broad categories.
Global roles: Users with these roles can access all Microsoft 365 admin features. The two global roles are as follows:
The person who signed up for Microsoft 365 automatically becomes a global admin.
Administrator roles: These roles are assigned to individuals responsible for maintaining the different administrative aspects of your Microsoft 365 services, such as licensing, billing, users, helpdesk requests, and so on. Some key roles under this category are as follows:
Admins for a specific app or workload: It is a best practice to assign individuals admin access only to the services that they are responsible for. Some noteworthy admin roles for specific services are as follows:
There are other admin roles in addition to the ones mentioned here. A full list of admin roles and their descriptions is available at https://packt.link/admin-roles.
With this high-level summary of administration roles completed, we are ready to begin exploring recipes for different services in Microsoft 365.
Our aim is to equip you with the necessary knowledge to maximize the benefits of your Microsoft 365 subscription. Understanding the entire Microsoft 365 ecosystem may seem overwhelming, which is why this book is specifically designed to provide explanations on the functionality of each Microsoft 365 application, how to effectively utilize them, and guidance on when to choose one over another.
Microsoft 365 is compatible with various devices, offering a consistent experience across all platforms. However, please note that the screenshots in this book were captured on Windows 10 devices using the Chrome browser. Therefore, if you are using a different operating system or browser, there may be slight differences in the visual presentation.
Although this book comprehensively addresses the key applications in the Microsoft 365 suite, it’s important to acknowledge that the technology continues to evolve rapidly. Certain services may become deprecated, while new ones are introduced. In creating this book, our aim was to align closely with the current offerings. We sincerely hope that this book proves valuable to you in your Microsoft 365 pursuits. As a reminder, we encourage you to reach out to us via customercare@packtpub.com and mention the book title in the subject line for any feedback or concerns that you may have. We always welcome your input in helping make this book better.
Best of luck. Let’s get started! Our first few chapters will cover one of the most widely used services, SharePoint.
To join the Discord community for this book – where you can share feedback, ask questions to the author, and learn about new releases – follow the QR code below:
Where there is an eBook version of a title available, you can buy it from the book details for that title. Add either the standalone eBook or the eBook and print book bundle to your shopping cart. Your eBook will show in your cart as a product on its own. After completing checkout and payment in the normal way, you will receive your receipt on the screen containing a link to a personalised PDF download file. This link will remain active for 30 days. You can download backup copies of the file by logging in to your account at any time.
If you already have Adobe reader installed, then clicking on the link will download and open the PDF file directly. If you don't, then save the PDF file on your machine and download the Reader to view it.
Please Note: Packt eBooks are non-returnable and non-refundable.
Packt eBook and Licensing When you buy an eBook from Packt Publishing, completing your purchase means you accept the terms of our licence agreement. Please read the full text of the agreement. In it we have tried to balance the need for the ebook to be usable for you the reader with our needs to protect the rights of us as Publishers and of our authors. In summary, the agreement says:
If you want to purchase a video course, eBook or Bundle (Print+eBook) please follow below steps:
Our eBooks are currently available in a variety of formats such as PDF and ePubs. In the future, this may well change with trends and development in technology, but please note that our PDFs are not Adobe eBook Reader format, which has greater restrictions on security.
You will need to use Adobe Reader v9 or later in order to read Packt's PDF eBooks.
Packt eBooks are a complete electronic version of the print edition, available in PDF and ePub formats. Every piece of content down to the page numbering is the same. Because we save the costs of printing and shipping the book to you, we are able to offer eBooks at a lower cost than print editions.
When you have purchased an eBook, simply login to your account and click on the link in Your Download Area. We recommend you saving the file to your hard drive before opening it.
For optimal viewing of our eBooks, we recommend you download and install the free Adobe Reader version 9.