Go Online With SharePoint!

Let’s starts with story….

I was travelling to my hometown, it was Friday evening. Suddenly phone rings, client at other end.

Client: Vishal, we have four new joiners today. Please create account for them with SharePoint online license and provide access to our online portal. User details are emailed you. It is very “Urgent”.

Ohh….. Administrator’s life! I rarely came across a client requirement, which are not Urgent!

No Laptop, No dongle…only mobile as a gadget….how can I assist them!

Thanks to 4G in my mobile

Jokes apart, Microsoft had launched app named ‘Office 365 Admin’ – a huge help in these kind of situations.

I installed ‘Office 365 Admin’ on my mobile. I logged into the app with my O365 account, created 4 users and replied to client! Got reply as ‘You are awesome!’

I would like to share the features of O365 admin mobile app to make administrator life little easy!

Office 365 Admin:

1. Monitor Service Health

2. Manage Users

3. Submit Support requests

This app is available for windows, IPhone and Android mobiles.

Prerequisite:

User has to be administration level permission at SharePoint Online domain to use this app.

A. App Installation:

Go to Mobile App store on your mobile and search for “Office 365 Admin”, install it and Login with your Microsoft office credentials.

B. Dashboard 

After Login to App user can see Dashboard:

From dashboard, we can see Service Health, unread Messages from message center along with quick links to the Users and Support requests at a single glance. Quick links are configurable with ‘Customize Menu’ option in Settings.

1. User Management:

To have a look at people in our organization, we choose ‘Users’.

Modify User Details:

We can select a user or search them.

After user selection we can manage user’s license, user role, update contact information and reset password. There is also facility to block user access for SharePoint domain.

Add new user:

We can also add new user by select new tab from user page:

2. Service Health:

Selecting ‘Heath’ option from Dashboard.

Open Service incident to get more details about it.

Sometimes at background Microsoft works on some service upgradation/degradation, causes SharePoint sites not accessible. Here we can find details of such activities with down time.

We can share this details by selecting Share option and enter email address of person with whom you want to share the details.

This is the useful information for any employee affected by the incident.

3. Messages:

About upcoming changes for office 365 service, choose Messages.

We can see the planned Features or service changes for O365.

Open a message for more details. We can also share this message within organization people.

4. Support:

In case of any issue with SharePoint product functionality or for any query, we can contact Microsoft support. Either we can raise service request or US users can directly call on support number.

User can view exiting tickets or create a new one.

C. Other Features:

Office 365 Admin app provides other features in menu options. We can access menu button at top left of dashboard (highlighted in below image).

We already discussed Users, Health, Messages and Support options. Let’s look at other features as feedback, settings etc.

5. Feedback:

We can give our feedback to Microsoft with Feedback option available in menu. User can rate it, suggest a feature or report a bug.

6. Settings :

User can manage personal app level settings with this option.

• FAQ: To learn more about admin mobile app, select FAQ.
• Notifications: Service health Notification, to get notify about any changes in services which are selected by user.
• Security: Using Security option, we can add Passcode for admin app, so that no one else can open it from phone.
• Language: User can set language for this app.
• Customize Menu : User can customize dashboard display options on app home page
• Social: Using Social functionality we can get in connect with other administrators via email.

This is all about SharePoint Online App, makes administrator life little easy!

About Author:
Vishal Himane is a consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, he actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. He can be contacted at: vishal.himane@spluspl.com