How to Use and Access the Office 365 Admin Centre

The Admin Centre, whether you are a Microsoft 365 Business tenant or a professional managing Microsoft 365 Business tenants, is your one-stop shop for all your cloud-based business services, devices, and users. Microsoft 365 admin can be accessed via the Microsoft 365 app or admin.microsoft.com.

There are two kinds of admin accounts: global and regular. When you buy 365 Business, you become a global administrator. Global admins are usually internal employees who need the most access to processes. Most MSPs and outsourced IT professionals act as global administrators externally for their clients.

What is the Microsoft 365 Admin Centre?

The Microsoft Office 365 Admin Centre allows administrators to manage user accounts, configuration settings, and Office 365 subscription services, including Exchange Online and SharePoint Online.

The Microsoft Office 365 Admin Centre serves as the primary management interface for Microsoft Office 365. Anyone can be designated as an administrator. However, traditional Exchange administrators usually handle management in business environments.

Administrators use their administrative credentials to access the Microsoft Office 365 Admin Centre through a browser. The Microsoft Office 365 Admin Centre supports user, group, and resource tasks. It also provides billing, support, setting reports, health, and reporting. Each management section is listed in the left-hand menu. The Microsoft Office 365 Admin Centre homepage can be customised to display tiles for the most frequently used areas. These tiles can be selected, arranged, and modified by administrators to their liking.

The Microsoft Office 365 admin centre can be accessed via a web-based browser interface. Microsoft 365 has been renamed Office 365 following the official announcement by Microsoft. This means the new Office 365 administration centre is now known as Microsoft 365. The Microsoft 365 admin centre makes it easier to integrate with other Microsoft services.

Open up your browser and visit: https://login.microsoftonline.com Enter your administrator account name, admin@yourdomain.onmicrosoft.com, and click Next. Enter your admin password and click Sign up. If you have configured Multi-factor authentication for Office 365 admin login, you must enter a confirmation code before you continue. Once you have logged into the Office 365 website, you will see links to all the online applications you can use with your subscription, including Word Online, Exchange Online, and SharePoint Online. This page will display the Admin icon when logged on as an administrator. To open the Microsoft Office 365 administrator centre, click the Admin icon. If you do not see the Admin button, you may not have administrative rights for Office 365 within your organisation. A person who purchases Office 365 for Business and creates a Microsoft Account automatically gets administrative rights and the Office 365 admin user account. You can also enter the following link in your web browser as an alternative: https://admin.microsoft.com Enter the Office 365 administrator account name and password to sign in. Only organisation accounts with business subscription plans can access the Office 365 admin centre. Organisational accounts should be configured so that Office 365 services are delivered through a domain. The Office 365 admin centre cannot separate home users with personal subscriptions and accounts.

Interface Components

When you log in to the Microsoft 365 admin centre (formerly Office 365 admin centre), you will see three main panels with options at the top of the window.

The three main panels are: 1.The top management group 2.The left navigation pane contains sub-sections. Users Groups Roles Resources Billing Support Settings Setup Reports Health 1.The admin centre panel In detail, let us look at each panel in the Microsoft 365 admin centre interface.

The top panel

The top panel is horizontal and contains five main elements in the GUI. All Office 365 users have access to this panel. This panel allows you to create a profile for your Office 365 account.

Office 365 Menu To open the Office 365 Menu, click the 9-dot icon. This menu allows you to switch between any Office 365 application available in your subscription plan. Only users with administrative rights can access the Admin icon. Notifications. You can view notifications for your Office 365 account by clicking the bell icon. Settings. This menu allows you to select your language, time zone, display theme, customise your notification settings, change your contact preferences, and change your password. Support Assistant. This menu is available if you require help from Microsoft. My account. To open your account settings, click the coloured circle in the top-right corner. You can access your account settings to view your personal information, subscriptions, and security options.

The Left Navigation Pane

This navigation pane on the left is essential to the Microsoft Office 365 admin centre. You can use it to navigate through settings for your Office 365 domain, user accounts, groups, permissions, and more. This navigation pane is a menu that has sections and sub-sections. Let's go through each section.

Home

Click this link to return to the Office 365 admin centre's main page.

The following elements can be seen in the middle of the page: A field for searching users, groups, and objects + Add card. Add cards to the home page to quickly access frequently visited pages—for example, a message centre, Azure AD, or reports. You can arrange, delete, and move the cards to customise the view. Dark/Light mode. Choose the theme you like. You can choose between light and dark modes. What's new? Microsoft Admin Centre and Office 365 are updated regularly. Click on this link to find out what's new. Microsoft regularly updates Office 365, and you can find the latest news here. A switcher to move between the new admin centre and the old admin centre.

Users

The management of user accounts is the most common task administrators perform. This section contains four subsections for managing Office 365 accounts for students or workers. Active users. The table shows a list of all active users. Add a user or multiple users. You can also create templates for users and add them. Multi-factor authentication is enabled or disabled. Manage Office 365 Users (add, edit, delete, and export users), reset Passwords, assign user licences, and select users using filters. Sort active users according to columns. Click Username, for example, to sort users based on a username. The columns are: Display name | Username | Licences | Sign-in status | Sync status | Choose columns Select columns Click to select columns. Contacts and guest users You can use these options to create external user email contacts. Deleted users. You can view a list of deleted users and restore them if necessary.

Groups

These options will help you manage your organisation's Office 365 users, groups, security lists, distribution lists, and shared mailboxes. It is easier to manage Office 365 groups than individual users.

Roles

The Microsoft 365 admin centre allows global Office 365 admins to assign different admin roles to other users. This is a good option if you have many users and want to give some authority to administrators responsible for Exchange management, licencing management, or SharePoint management. The complete Office 365 admin roles list can be found on the Roles Page. You can read the descriptions of each role to determine which role you should assign to users.

Resources

You can create and manage resources such as conference rooms and sites. You can view your SharePoint sites, site collections, and external sharing status. Learn more about SharePoint and OneDrive.

Billing

You can check your subscription status and purchase additional Microsoft cloud services. You can also configure payment methods and view billing. You can assign licences, view licences, and see how many licences you have left for your Office 365 plan.

Support

This section allows you to create a new request for support from Microsoft if necessary. You can also view the status of recent requests. Microsoft offers Office 365 admin assistance.

Settings

You can manage global Office 365 Settings for Applications, including authentication settings, emails, calendars, external sharing policies, password policies, Azure Active Directory Integration, etc. Change the password expiration date. You can also change release preferences, calendar options,

Setup

View product details, assign or manage licences for software, manage domains, and manage data migration. You can add a domain, buy a new one, and check its status. You can migrate email accounts from services like Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo and import data using exported PST files.

Reports

You can view a detailed report on how Office 365 is used by users in your organisation for a specific period of time. You can compare the dynamics of selected periods (7, 30, or 90 days) and monitor which applications users prefer. The reports can be used to determine which users of your company don't use Office 365 and, therefore, may not require the licence assigned. They can also help identify who is using a service a great deal and is about to exceed quotas.

Health

Check the status of your Office 365 Services by opening this section within the Office 365 admin centre. The alert icon will appear near the service name if there are any issues or interruptions. You can see the number of incidents in the Status column and the number displayed. You can stay updated on past and upcoming events using the message centre.

Admin Centres

In the Microsoft 365 admin centre, the section at the bottom of the navigation pane contains all the essential Office 365 product configuration options. This allows the Office 365 administrator to easily access all the settings through a single interface.

Security/Compliance. To open the Office 365 Security and Compliance Administration Centre, click on one of these options. Azure Active Directory. Azure Active Directory. Manage Office 365 mailboxes and user accounts by going to the Exchange Online admin centre. Configure group mailboxes and anti-spam protection. Also, configure mail flow rules. Do not forget to back up data in users' mailboxes using Microsoft Office 365. Open the SharePoint admin centre for Office 365 and configure the Microsoft Cloud so that the organisation's users can work together. The Microsoft Teams admin centre allows for scheduling meetings using Skype for Business, managing teams, setting policies, viewing reports, etc. All admin centres This opens a list of all Office 365 admin centres, including those for OneDrive Enterprise, Yammer Enterprise, Dynamics 365 Power Apps, Skype For Business, and others.

Managing reports, services, and billing within the Microsoft 365 admin centre

Microsoft 365 Business accounts come preloaded with several services. You can manage licences for each organisation and user as an administrator. It is easy to adjust the number of licences by going into the Admin Centre and buying new ones in the Billing section. It's not uncommon for employees to change their access requirements when they move within the company. As an administrator, you can decide which Business 365 plan a user needs to transition into the new business group.

Businesses care about the way their employees use resources. IT professionals with admin rights can generate usage reports of all active users using the Reports Task in the Admin Centre. Reports can be generated for many applications, including Exchange, OneDrive, and Teams. The usage reports provide detailed information about a user's activities and usage. These data can be viewed in a colourful list or chart view, showing which employees take full advantage of the 365 Business licence. You can make suggestions to the client's leadership if the usage of a particular application is low in their organisation.

It is easy to see invoices for the next bill cycle in the Admin Centre. You can view all invoices by navigating to the Billing task and then selecting the 'bills and payments section. You can download them as PDFs or print them out for your records with a click. The billing person for a client with admin rights can update the payment method and billing cycle frequency.

The Admin Centre allows you to manage the Microsoft 365 subscriptions of your clients easily. Another essential function of the Admin Centre is to manage its users.

Managing your users

The Admin Centre's most potent feature is managing active users. You can add or remove users as your client's staff joins, leaves, or changes. You'll have to assign roles when you do this. As stated previously, you should be selective when assigning admin roles. Leaders within the organisation might need admin privileges. A team member managed by three levels of people probably won't. You can assign users to different groups. This is useful if you organise employees according to their department or job function.

Each user is assigned a unique profile. This profile includes their username, contact details, title, and more. You can change this as an administrator. You can edit a user's profile if they change their surname, company role, or need a new email.

The company email signature can be made uniform throughout an organisation. You'll need HTML to format the signature text, and logos must link to active domains.

Manage devices and security

Security is crucial, especially for a workforce that works partially remotely. Passwords can expire, or users may be hacked. You can choose to receive an alert every time an employee resets their password, or you can let them do it themselves. The first option may be appropriate for working with a small or medium business. For larger companies, it is essential to give users self-service reset access. Azure Active Directory allows users to authenticate using their mobile number or email.

You can set up multi-factor authentication in the Admin Centre for every active user. This, along with other measures such as enabling Windows Defender Antivirus and ensuring that all devices are updated automatically, will help to keep malware and cyber risks low.

It's easy to stay up-to-date with these updates.

Tracking Microsoft 365 changes for your users

Use the Admin Centre to share the latest updates with your users. You can use two features: the targeted release and the message centre.

It is easy to understand what a targeted release means. By selecting the release preferences for each group, you can select which users will be notified of scheduled updates. You can empower your organisation as an IT professional by educating them early on the importance of updates.

You can create a digest of Microsoft's weekly announcements and changes in the message centre. These can be easily shared with key leaders within the company, who can then share them with other employees. The message centre can be accessed from the Health task on the admin console.

Is there an alternative to the native Admin centre?

Many M365 shops—significantly smaller organisations—are content with the M365 Admin Centre and don't know that there is an alternative. Many who know about the alternatives ask, "Isn't Microsoft 365 Admin Centre enough for my business?" They have admin centres that can handle all applications and services." This question implies that there are only a few Microsoft 365 Admin centres. A dozen different administrative centres are geared towards different services and applications. Each one has a unique approach, often a very distinct approach. This is the problem. Microsoft 365 is so giant that it would be impossible for one person to master and manage everything. Switching between different admin centres to manage the entire system is also difficult. Microsoft 365's native administration is complex and has several notable drawbacks.

Need for scripting Lack of automation Poor policy and workflow management No single view or control centre Even simple admin tasks require PowerShell scripting and manual processes. The scripting takes time to create and can take a while to collect data. The cumulative costs in time and resources are also a concern when there is no central storage for these PowerShell scripts. Even after data has been collected, there are sometimes straightforward ways to act on or report on the data. Givespark makes the life of a Microsoft 365 administrator easier. To do a good administration job when using the Native Microsoft 365 Admin centres, IT teams must include experts in Exchange and SharePoint. The user interfaces are different, and how you collect data to create reports is also unique. Most processes are either PowerShell-driven or manual, making them more error-prone than automated, repeatable, and established processes. Givespark allows a single administrator to manage all services and features associated with their M365 tenant through a web-based interface. Digging deep into tenant data without using scripts or manual processes is much easier and more efficient. Additionally, once an automated workflow has been created, anyone authorised to use it can use it. This means that your entire IT team will need to be less specialised in M365. While a single administrator can theoretically manage every aspect of your M365 implementation with Givespark, there are still limitations to the number of hours an individual has in a week. Sometimes tasks can pile up and slow down departments in your organisation. Givespark allows administrators to set up "permissions" for those users who require access to specific M365 controls but cannot have full administrative rights. Your central IT team can delegate particular tasks, with permissions dependent on completing those tasks. By doing this, you can both reduce the workload of your central IT department and speed up tasks for stakeholders. This allows them to focus on tasks they are best qualified to do.

Conclusion

Microsoft 365 Administration Centre is an updated Office 365 Administration Centre version. The Microsoft 365 admin centre is a new unified management interface that allows an organisation to configure all Microsoft Cloud applications and services. Microsoft 365 admin centre allows administrators to open all admin centres in a single window; they can access the Exchange Online admin, SharePoint Online admin, OneDrive admin, etc. Office 365 administrators can assign administrative tasks to users using admin roles. The Microsoft 365 admin centre offers administrators high flexibility and usability.