Chapter 1: Office 365 Setup and Basic Administration

Welcome to the Microsoft Office 365 Administration Cookbook. This book will share step-by-step instructions for completing basic to advanced administration tasks throughout the Office 365 ecosystem and is geared toward newer Office 365 administrators.

Many of the basic administration and tenant setup tasks are simple, but they require making decisions that are difficult to reverse or adjust later. In this first chapter, we'll cover important topics such as connecting a domain to your tenant, enabling PowerShell abilities, and migrating data to your new tenant. We'll also go over basic navigation and ongoing tasks administrators should commit to a routine.

We will cover the following recipes in this chapter:

• Accessing the admin centers
• Setting up the PowerShell environment
• Viewing and filtering the roadmap
• Discovering upcoming changes
• Opening a service request
• Monitoring service request...

Technical requirements

This chapter requires users to have administrative privileges in Office 365. Those with a global administrator role will be able to perform every task in each recipe. Specific app and functional administrators will be able to do many of the recipes. Throughout the book, we'll cover recipes requiring certain admin roles. All of these can be assigned by a current global administrator via the Microsoft 365 admin center's Users blade if they're not already.

For the second recipe, Setting up the PowerShell environment, you will need to download the Microsoft Services Online Sign-in Assistant, but this is covered in the recipe. For all other recipes, no downloads/installations are required.

Accessing the admin centers

Admin centers provide an interface through which you'll configure global settings, restrictions, and allowances for each app and service in Office 365. In this recipe, you'll learn how to find the admin centers for all apps and services used for configuration, management, and reporting of Office 365 apps and services.

Getting ready

You must be a user assigned as a global administrator or have a specific app administrator role to be able to access the corresponding app's admin center.

How to do it…

1. Go to the Microsoft 365 admin center at http://admin.microsoft.com.
2. Select Show all from the left navigation menu:

   Figure 1.1 – The left navigation pane of the Microsoft 365 admin center

3. Select the admin center you wish to access from those that appear by default, or select All admin centers to view a complete list. The All admin centers view is seen here:




Figure 1.2 –...

Setting up the PowerShell environment

PowerShell is an ever-growing scripting language that allows network and system admins to interact with Microsoft products in an elevated manner. Admins can use PowerShell to create new users, make changes to users, interact with MS-SQL tables, move and manipulate files, and much more. PowerShell cmdlets are single-purpose functions with specific rules and syntax, but there are hundreds of these cmdlets, giving admins a flexible and extensible toolset with which to customize, administer, and run their tenant.

As there are so many possible uses of PowerShell, Chapter 3, Administering Office 365 with PowerShell, is dedicated to the topic. However, every admin must start somewhere, and that is why the basic steps to setting up your PowerShell environment are presented here in the following recipe—steps for connecting your desktop or laptop to your Office 365 tenant.

Getting ready

To start, an admin must have PowerShell installed,...

Viewing and filtering the roadmap

Microsoft 365 Roadmap lets you know what's in development and being released in Office 365 for all subscription types. You can filter the roadmap to identify only the changes and releases relevant to your environment and purchased licenses, then use that news to coordinate change management and communicate with your organization's leaders and users. In this recipe, we will explore the roadmap and learn how to maximize its usage.

Getting ready

The roadmap is publicly available and only requires internet access.

How to do it…

1. Go to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap site at http://roadmap.office.com.
2. Under Filters > Products, select Office 365:

   


   Figure 1.8 – The Microsoft 365 Roadmap filter pane's Products section

3. If you know your organization's chosen release phase, select it from under Release Phase to narrow down the results to only those relevant to your schedule:

   


   Figure 1.9 –...

Discovering upcoming changes

The Microsoft 365 Message center, found within the Microsoft 365 admin center, is a place to keep track of all upcoming changes, new features, and planned maintenance relevant to your environment. Official announcements from Microsoft are released through the Message center, giving a high-level overview and links to additional information. In this recipe, you'll access upcoming changes via the Message center.

Getting ready

You must have been assigned to an appropriate admin role in Office 365 or assigned the Message center reader role.

How to do it…

1. Go to the Microsoft admin center for your tenant at https://admin.microsoft.com/.
2. Under Health, select Message center.
3. Now, you can see a list of active messages, messages filtered as being of high importance, or a filtered view of unread or archived messages:

   Figure 1.12 – The Office 365 Message center All active messages view

4. Click on any message title, and a...

Opening a service request

Service requests are how you ask Microsoft for assistance in resolving an issue in Office 365. By submitting a service request, you're asking to be contacted to elaborate on and discuss an issue further in pursuit of a resolution. In this recipe, we'll create a new service request.

Getting ready

You must be an Office 365 administrator to create service requests.

How to do it…

1. Go to the Microsoft 365 admin center at http://admin.microsoft.com.
2. Hover over the teal question mark icon in the lower right of the screen and select Need help? once it appears:

   


   Figure 1.14 – The Need help? button appears in the lower right-hand corner of the admin center

   OR from the left navigation menu, select Show all > Support > New service request:

   


   Figure 1.15 – The Microsoft 365 admin center's left-hand navigation menu's Support section

3. A panel opens on the right hand of the screen and, by default...

Monitoring service request status

Once your service request is submitted, you receive an email confirmation with its details. But as you get more requests in simultaneously, this can become difficult to manage. This recipe will share how you can monitor all service requests and their statuses in the Microsoft 365 admin center.

Getting ready

You must be an Office 365 administrator to monitor and manage service requests.

How to do it…

1. Go to the Microsoft 365 admin center at http://admin.microsoft.com.
2. Select Show all > Support > View service requests.
3. From here, you can export, search, or filter your service requests and see current statuses:

   


   Figure 1.20 – View of service request history in the Microsoft 365 admin center

4. Select a service request to see its case notes and history:

Figure 1.21 – An active service request's details screen

How it works…

The service request history screen...

Adding a domain

By default, new tenants' users are given addresses with their tenant name followed by onmicrosoft.com, such as [e-mail]. Adding your own domain, such as contoso.com, means you can change that user format to [e-mail] and have Outlook for Office 365 handle mail for that domain. In this recipe, we'll add the natechamberlain.com domain to our tenant.

Getting ready

You must be a Global Administrator to add a domain. You do not need to have already purchased a domain, as that can be done through this process.

How to do it…

1. Go to the Microsoft 365 admin center at http://admin.microsoft.com.
2. Select Show all > Setup > Domains to add or buy an existing or new domain.
3. For this recipe, we will choose Add domain, but note the option to also purchase your domain if you don't already have one or would just like an additional domain. Select Add domain.
4. Enter your Domain name, then select Use this domain...

Changing the domain for users

Once you've added a custom domain, or if you've acquired multiple domains and need to move existing users between domains, you can use the Change domains option. This changes users' email addresses and login credentials and can affect any scheduled meetings, so be sure to communicate this important fact prior to performing the steps in this recipe. In this recipe, you'll change selected users' domains.

Getting ready

You must be an Office 365 administrator to be able to change a user's domain.

How to do it…

1. Go to the Microsoft 365 admin center at http://admin.microsoft.com.
2. Select Users > Active users.
3. Select all users for whom you're making the domain change and select Change domains:

   


   Figure 1.27 – Two users selected and the ellipsis menu showing the Change domains option

4. Select the new domain from the drop-down list and read the disclaimer:

   Figure 1.28 – The...

Assigning a license to a user

Users are restricted on what they can do within your environment based on the license(s) that have been assigned. Even basic functions—such as navigation through the tenant, the ability to email, and using various applications—all require some form of license.

This recipe demonstrates how to assign a product license to individual users or even all members of a group via the Microsoft 365 admin center.

Getting ready

Only a user with an appropriate admin role (such as Global Admin, License Admin, and so on) can assign a user license. Also, the tenant must have licenses of the appropriate type free/available to be assigned. This requires the correct number of licenses to have been purchased for your tenant.

How to do it…

1. Go to the Microsoft 365 admin center at http://admin.microsoft.com.
2. Select Users > Active users.
3. Select the user(s) for whom you're making the license change and select Manage product...

Assigning a license to a group

Assigning licenses to individual users can become a pain point for large organizations, or even smaller organizations that hire infrequently. The ability to quickly assign licenses based on groups of users is an efficient method of managing user licensing, especially if changes need to be made to all users within a group. In this recipe we'll do just that—assign a license to a group.

Getting ready

Only a user with an appropriate admin role (such as Global Admin, License Admin, and so on) can assign a user license. Also, the tenant must have licenses of the appropriate type free/available to be assigned. This requires the correct number of licenses to have been purchased for your tenant.

Finally, user locations play an active role in the assigning of licenses to a group process. Microsoft licenses are not available in all locations. A user's location property must be set before a license from a specific location can be assigned...

Customizing navigation of the admin center

If you use certain admin centers frequently, you can adjust the navigation menu of the Microsoft 365 admin center so that those admin center links are always visible and not hidden beneath the Show all link. In this recipe, we'll make sure Azure AD, Exchange, and SharePoint admin centers are always visible on our menu.

Getting ready

A user must be an admin with the appropriate role (such as Global Admin). These steps are based on the "new" admin center (released for preview in 2018-2019).

How to do it…

1. Go to the Microsoft 365 admin center at http://admin.microsoft.com.
2. On the left-hand navigation panel, click Customize navigation. The Customize your navigation pane panel will open on the right side of the screen:

   


   Figure 1.37 – The configuration pane for choosing what appears in the left-hand navigation pane

3. Check the box next to the various links and admin centers you want to appear...

Personalizing your admin center home page

As with any application, the number of options, selections, and settings grows over time, having quick and ready access to information and common tasks. For example, the User management card allows an admin single-click access to add, delete, edit, or reset the password of a user. This kind of flexibility goes beyond simply changing colors and themes and helps improve the overall user experience. Let's personalize what appears on our home page.

Getting ready

A user must be an admin with the appropriate role (such as Global Admin). These steps are based on the "new" admin center (released for preview in 2018-2019).

How to do it…

1. Go to the Microsoft 365 admin center at http://admin.microsoft.com.
2. To the right of the main panel, click Add card:

   Figure 1.39 – The Microsoft 365 admin center landing page with the Add card button in the upper right

   A variety of preconfigured cards are made available...