Just under three years ago I wrote about the Office 365 Admin app and what I thought of its operation on my Windows phone. Since those days, the app has changed drastically and the UI operation is much different from it was back then: The newer one appears to be more in line with the current look of Office 365, which you would expect as the styling of Office 365 has changes in those two and a half years. |
More Interface Changes What is also gone is the method to change screens. At the top of the older version from 2015, you see ‘Home’, ‘Users’ and the next tab which begins with ‘He’. This version required you to swipe left or right to get to the next tab of information for you tenant. There were some initial interface issues with that decision and the swiping could hand the entire app on some tabs. With the newer 2018 version of the app, there are the buttons and items to tap on the front page, but there is also the three-line menu on the upper left which allows us to switch to different parts of the app. The difference is an app the feels more polished and accessible. I also have not had any issues with changing screens, so I would also say it’s more reliable as well at this point. |
Messages Messages on the app is a reflection of the same functionality (Message Center) from the main Admin page for your Office 365 Tenant. Specifically these are items that Microsoft would like to highlight about your experience in Office 365. |
We can click on individual messages to get a more detailed view, all within the app: |
Alerts Next we have Alerts which is a reflection of your Service Health page with all the current Advisories that are out there and each individual Office 365 service can be reviewed as well: |
User Management User management exposes the Admin page essentially for working with your users accounts in Office 365. First think we see when we tap on Users is a list of all of our current users even with the users little letter bubbles. You can scroll up or down on the users list to find which user needs to be managed. When you click on the particular user account, a plethora of options is exposed. |
With a user account selected we now see the name of the user, a phone number and if its directory synchronized at the top of the user info. We are also provided with some ‘Quick Actions’ like Resetting the password, assigning a license or blocking the user account. |
Below this we have more user details like Contact Info, Alias, User Role, Membership, Office Installs and Mobile Devices. |
Important information here consists of: Alias – these are the email aliases for this account User Role – lists any admin roles assigned and allows the assignment of roles as well. |
At the very bottom of a user’s properties, we have more advanced features for a mailbox / user as we see like Automatic Replies, Email Forwarding, Litigation Hold and Email Permissions. Each of these allows us to modify some of the settings for the user account: |
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Automatic replies – toggling this allows us to set Out of Office replies for internal and external messages. Email forwarding – Simple toggle and a place to add a destination email address Litigation hold – Toggling this switch allows for a set of days to be entered as well as a reason for the hold. Email permissions – This displays the Send As, Send on Behalf and Full Access permissions on the user’s mailbox. What is cool here is that we can edit each of these if need be, right from the app. |
Group Management Group management will show all regular Distribution Groups as well as Office 365 Groups that exist in your tenant: |
We can click on each type of group and see if the group is an Office 365 Group (left) or a regular Distribution Group: |
Notice the difference in options between the two types of groups. With an Office 365 Group we can edit the owner and the members. Whereas the Distribution Group does not have this option. |
Billing This is another section pulled from the main Admin page for your Office 365 tenant. Any billing information would be shown here: |
Support This selection can be used to list current, closed and completed cases that have been opened for your Office 365 tenant. The different case types can be revealed with the drop down menu on the top right of this page. |
Main Menu If you tap on the three bar icon in the upper left corner of the Admin app, this will reveal a contextual menu that will take you to various parts of the office 365 admin app. Revealed are links to the home screen, users, groups, contacts, billing, heath, messages, support, migrations, resources, Feedback, Settings and Sign-Out. Some of these options have already been covered by this article. |
Menu – Settings The first menu item we’ll cover is the ‘Settings’ menu item. This menu selection allows us to manage sign-ins, review an FAQ, see notifications and more: |
Manage Sign-Ins – allows you to add new admin accounts for Office 365 tenants FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions about the app (web page) Notifications – This on allows granular control over what notifications you want to see – Service Health: Long list of options to configure – Azure, Rights Mgmt, Office 365 Portal, Sway, Yammer and more… – Message Center: Turn off or on ‘Prevent or fix’ and ‘Plan for change’ Security – Allows you to lock the app with a passcode in order to use it Language – Change the language of the app – choose from a large list of languages Customize Menu – Change what is show on the menu for the app Social – Link to other admins – using the ‘Find other admins’ Organization Profile – Information about your organization (location, phone, email and name) Release preference – Useful if you want to choose a different release like ‘First Release for everyone’ or Standard Release Calendar – Enable external sharing options Cortana – Enables Cortana use in your tenant for everyone Office Online – Allow third-party storage Skype for Business – Turn on external federation Sway – Allow external sharing and allow external sources like Flickr, Twitter and more |
Menu – Feedback This section allows the admin to send feedback to Office 365 support. You can attach logs, rate the app and even allow Microsoft to contact you about your experience. |
Menu – Resources Just like the previous management for Office 365 objects (Users and groups) we also have an option to manager resources (a.k.a. rooms and equipment). |
Menu – Migrations This feature is quite useful if you are in the middle of a migration to Exchange Online. We can review the batches that are present and get more detailed information on the success or failures of your migration batches. |
Menu – Notifications In this section you can decide what sorts of notifications that you would like to receive. We see there are quite a few options for both the Service Center and Message Center. All of these are left on by default |
Menu – Security With this option we can secure the Office 365 Admin app with a passcode. |
Menu – Language Not much to say here, we can change the language for the app here: |
Menu – Customize We can customize the ap to decide what features we want to see. All are on by default: |
Menu – Social This is an interesting feature where you can reach out to other admins in Office 365 in your area: |
Menu – Release Preference Decide how new Office 365 features should be released in your tenant: |
Menu – Calendar Decide how calendars are shared externally by your users: |
Menu – Cortana Turn Cortana on or off for you users: |
Menu – Office Online While the option that appears is covered by a ingle toggle switch, it would be worth reading the documentation on what this switch actually does from Microsoft. |
Menu – Skype For Business There is only one setting that can be changed here and it is for allowing the contact with other organizations with Skype: |
Menu – Sway Similar to calendar sharing, we can decide how we wish to share Sway content externally: |
Conclusions My final thoughts are that this app has certainly changed and become a much better app over the past few years. However, similar to the way that Office 365 has expanded and become a more complete product, the Office 365 Admin app needs to add more functionality to keep it current. Here are some of the items I would like to see:
Hopefully this app will continue to grow and stay relevant for Office 365 Administrators. |