Technological administration is a huge part of a modern professional organisation. How does Microsoft 365 simplify this responsibility for businesses?

As businesses increasingly rely on technology, tech administration has become a more significant aspect of their operations. Given the numerous hardware and software solutions businesses use nowadays, managing IT can be quite time-consuming. Consequently, most businesses welcome any technology that can streamline and simplify IT administration. To explore how Microsoft 365 helps businesses simplify their IT administration, we spoke to TechQuarters, a managed service provider and Microsoft Solutions Partner based in London. TechQuarters has extensive experience not only with Microsoft Office 365 consultancy, but also with helping clients establish admin protocols through the platform. So, what are some of the ways that Microsoft 365 makes tech administration easier?

Microsoft 365 Solutions

Microsoft 365 offers an extensive range of products and services that can cater to almost all of a business’s daily needs, including storage, productivity, and communication. By integrating these functionalities into a single suite, managing administration across different areas of the business becomes more manageable. Since M365 is cloud-based, all the necessary tools and resources required for administration are available in the cloud, providing convenient access whenever needed, and allowing companies to provide IT support services remotely by accessing the clients’ M365 environment from anywhere with an internet connection. For example, TechQuarters has provided IT support for Education, by managing administrative responsibilities remotely through the Microsoft 365 Admin Centre. 

The Admin Centre

The main reason that Microsoft 365 makes tech administration so much easier is that it centralises all the tools and resources that an organisation needs into a single place – the Admin Centre. As a web platform, it couldn’t be easier for users to manage an entire M365 environment. The M365 admin centre is separated into different sections that serve different purposes.

1. Groups – In M365, Groups refer to any collection of users – these can include shared mailboxes, teams, distribution lists, etc. The Groups section in the Admin Centre is where admins manage them.

2. Billing – Microsoft 365 is deployed based on subscriptions as a cloud-based service. A user must have a license attached to their account, and licenses represent a billing unit – the more licenses an organisation has, the more expensive their M365 environment is. In the Admin Centre, there is a Billing section where admins can manage all licenses and subscriptions.

3. Settings – In Microsoft 365, there are many different settings, that can be configured – from security policies to domains, business profiles, and more. The Settings section in the Admin Centre centralises the management of all these different settings.

4. Reports – This section of the Admin Centre consolidates many different types of data generated in M365, which can be highly useful for admins. A common use case for this section is to monitor activity across an M365 environment, to ensure that resources are being used most efficiently.

5. Health – The health section of the Microsoft 365 Admin Centre helps IT administrators keep track of how well all the apps and services are performing. This is a section that TechQuarters, in their work providing IT support Law Firms rely on, leverage extensively. This part of the centre may be used to identify – or even predict – faults in software performance.

6. Admin Centres – As well as having sections that fulfil capabilities across the entirety of the M365 environment, the admin centre can also be used to break out into admin portals for each of the individual apps and services in the suite. This provides more granular control over all of the products and services, whilst still streamlining access to those controls.