Chapter 3: Core Microsoft 365 Components

In Chapter 2, Cloud Deployment Models and Services, we covered high-level cloud computing concepts, deployment models, and the different categories of services available. MS-900 primarily focuses on Microsoft 365, which is one of Microsoft's SaaS cloud offerings. If that still seems unclear to you, then it may be a good idea to go back to the first two chapters to brush up.

The objective of this chapter is to understand the core technologies that make up Microsoft 365.

In the exam, you might run into a variety of terms and product names, including Exchange
Online, SharePoint Online, Teams, Stream, Microsoft 365 Apps (formerly Office 365 ProPlus), Forms, Power Automate, Power Apps, Tasks by Planner and To Do, and Yammer. All of these products are part of a broader suite called Office 365.

Added to that are products such as Intune, Azure AD Premium, and Azure Information Protection. Together, these products make up another...

Understanding Windows 10 Enterprise

Windows 10 Enterprise (soon to be Windows 11) is a core component of Microsoft 365. Windows 10 is Microsoft's latest operating system (OS). There are several different editions, including Home, Education, and Enterprise (as well as a few more, depending on your organizational vertical or country). In this book, we will focus on the Enterprise edition, as that is the edition of the product that's included as part of Microsoft 365.

Windows 10 Enterprise is the most current OS and is designed to be the best fit for mid- to large-sized organizations. It brings three very important improvements for both the IT administrators and the end users:

• Management
• Productivity
• Security

Let's look a little deeper at each of these areas.

Management

With Windows 10 Enterprise, managing hundreds (or even thousands) of devices has become significantly easier. IT administrators have the flexibility to customize the OS and...

Exploring Microsoft 365 Apps for Business

Many users' first experience of the power of business applications was with Microsoft Office. Originally launched in November 1990, Microsoft Office has become the premier productivity application suite for millions of users worldwide. The Microsoft Office experience has been reimagined and is a fully integrated part of the Microsoft 365 platform. Microsoft 365 Apps for Business includes all of the desktop applications you've become familiar with, including Word, Outlook, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Publisher.

Traditionally, Office was a static product, licensed on a per-device or per-user basis. With Microsoft 365, the Office application suite has been transformed into an evergreen product with continuous updates and feature developments, leveraging the best of the Microsoft cloud. Like other parts of the Microsoft 365 platform, Microsoft 365 Apps for Business is subscription-based software. The following is a screenshot...

Exploring Exchange Online

If you've used Outlook before, you might have some familiarity with Exchange Online. Exchange Online, an essential part of Office 365, is the cloud version of Exchange Server.Exchange Online is a messaging collaboration tool that allows you to email your colleagues and clients, organize tasks, schedule meetings, view calendars, and manage contacts.

You can do all of this through a desktop application such as Outlook by using a web browser, or from a mobile device.

Exchange Online for users

Let's discuss some of the basic Exchange Online end user features!

Each user has an Exchange Online mailbox. This allows users to send and receive emails. Users may be required to preserve or archive content so that administrators can enable a variety of mailbox archiving and retention policies.

When a user views their mailbox using Outlook on the web, they will have an experience similar to the one shown in the following screenshot:

...

Exploring SharePoint Online

SharePoint Online (SPO), another essential part of Office 365, is a web-based collaboration and communication platform. Many organizations use SPO as an intranet.

SharePoint has two core design methodologies: classic and modern. Classic SharePoint is based on the older, on-premises versions of SharePoint Server, while modern SharePoint is a reimagining of the service, which relies heavily on responsive design elements and Microsoft 365 groups.

Regardless of which design methodology you choose (classic or modern), the underlying SharePoint technologies are largely the same. Content in SharePoint Online is organized hierarchically. This starts at the organizational or tenant level. From there, you have smaller groupings of content called site collections. Site collections, as the name implies, contain sites. A site collection can contain one or more sites.

With classic SharePoint, each site collection is generally a security boundary and contains...

Introducing Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams, a relatively new service in Office 365, is the collaboration hub for teamwork within your organization. It's based on Microsoft 365 Groups, which, as you learned previously, incorporates Azure Active Directory, SPO, and Exchange Online features.

Teams builds on the Microsoft 365 Groups framework to allow users to chat, host, and conduct meetings, share and collaborate on files, deploy bots and connectors to external services, and make calls. We will discuss the infrastructure later in this chapter, but it's important to understand the basic capabilities of Microsoft Teams first.

Let's take a look at some of the features of Teams.

Chat

The first Teams feature we'll explore is chat. Teams users can conduct both one-to-one (or peer-to-peer) chats and group chats. You can see a sample of the chat interface here:

Figure 3.12 – Microsoft Teams chat

Teams users can communicate via...

Discovering Microsoft Forms

Microsoft Forms is a survey tool that allows creators to ask a variety of questions and compile answers. Forms allows you to gather data through multiple-choice questions, text answers, date fields, and various rating methodologies. Respondents even have the opportunity to upload files.

The following screenshot shows an example of the Forms creation process:

Figure 3.18 – Microsoft Forms

Surveyors can review the answers to the questions, download the output of responses, or even send questions to database tables for further analysis.

Introducing the Power Platform

The Microsoft Power Platform comprises several modular tools, each of which can stand alone, integrate into other Power Platform or Microsoft 365 ecosystem tools, or connect to third-party applications and datasets.

Power Platform tools are primarily designed to be low-code or no-code tools that allow people without development backgrounds to create applications, workflows, and data visualizations. Power Platform's tools share configuration objects called connectors, which are used to define the inputs, outputs, and other information that are used to connect to applications and services.

The three main components of the Power Platform are Power Automate, Power Apps, and Power BI.

Power Automate

Power Automate is a workflow engine that allows users and administrators to automate common business scenarios. Power Automate can be used to connect Microsoft 365 apps, databases, spreadsheets, or files to other applications, perform data or text...

Discovering the features of Enterprise Mobility + Security

Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) is Microsoft 365's security solution. It's an identity-driven, holistic approach to help address today's security threats. EMS licensing comes in two tiers: E3 and E5. Because identity is the crux of Microsoft 365's model, it's important to have a basic understanding of Azure Active Directory (AAD).

For the sake of the MS-900 exam, it's important to cover the basic elements of EMS.

AAD Premium

AAD has two licensing levels: Premium 1 and Premium 2.

AAD Premium 1 (AADP1) is part of EMS E3. It allows you to use features such as multi-factor authentication (MFA), dynamic groups for license and application assignment, and conditional access. MFA is a security protocol that prompts users to verify their credentials using a second method, such as biometrics or a one-time-use passcode.

Dynamic Group Management allows administrators to determine group...

Summary

This chapter covered the core technologies that make up Microsoft 365. We learned about some of the advanced features of Windows 10 Enterprise and then covered four parts of the Office collaboration platform (Microsoft 365 Apps for Business, Exchange Online, SPO, and Teams). Finally, we discussed the breadth of capability in the EMS suite, Microsoft's holistic security platform, and identified which licenses cover which products and features.

After reading this chapter, you should be able to list the core Microsoft 365 services, along with two or three of the key features of each. For example, you should be able to identify Microsoft Teams and that some of its key features are meetings, chat, and file sharing.

In the next chapter, we will talk more about the advantages of having to deploy these cloud-based services over traditionally managed on-premises software.

Further reading

The following links provide more information on the EMS feature set:

• Multi-factor authentication: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/authentication/concept-mfa-howitworks
• Conditional Access: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/conditional-access/overview
• Microsoft Cloud App Security:
• Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/advanced-threat-analytics/what-is-ata
• Windows Client Access License: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/product-licensing/client-access-license
• EMS E5 capabilities and licensing: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise-mobility-security/compare-plans-and-pricing
• Microsoft Defender for Identity: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/defender-for-identity/what-is

Questions

Answer the following questions to test your knowledge of this chapter. You can find the answers in Chapter 18, Assessments:

1. Identify three core components of Microsoft 365.
   1. Enterprise Mobility + Security
   2. Windows 10 Enterprise edition
   3. Windows 10 Professional edition
   4. Office 365
   5. Windows Server 2019
   6. Windows 10 Home edition
   7. Azure Sentinel
   8. Azure IoT
2. Which Microsoft 365 feature utilizes biometrics?
   1. Windows Defender ATP
   2. Windows Hello for Business
   3. Windows Advanced Biometric Scanner
   4. Azure Information Protection
   5. Windows Information Protection
3. Exchange Online is primarily used for what?
   1. Creating and filling out online forms
   2. Composing spreadsheets
   3. Email and calendaring tasks
   4. Recording brief videos
4. The _________________ can be used to configure data loss prevention policies.
   1. Microsoft 365 admin center
   2. SharePoint Online admin center
   3. Matter center
   4. Compliance center
5. Exchange Online hybrid is an example of what kind of cloud deployment model?
   1. Service cloud
   2. Hybrid cloud
   3. Private cloud
   4. Public...