Microsoft 365 admin courses to level up your tenant’s maturity

More than ever, it’s essential to optimize critical aspects of your Microsoft 365 management to meet today’s and tomorrow’s challenges. Discover ShareGate’s 5 free online Microsoft 365 admin courses and videos that can help you run your environment more efficiently.

What’s that you said? ‘Microsoft 365’, ‘management’, and ‘overwhelming’, all in the same sentence? We’ve been there, and we get it. We want to lend a helping hand and guide your IT team toward optimizing and managing your Microsoft 365 environment in all the right places.

We created our new Microsoft 365 Maturity Program to make ongoing learning easy for Microsoft 365 admins and IT pros. There are five free online courses that’ll help you boost your knowledge at your own pace. You can start anytime!

In these courses, we’ll equip you with:  

1. Tips and tricks on how to improve your adoption, shadow IT, sprawl, governance strategy, and security 
2. Advice on how to elevate your Microsoft 365 strategy  

In this article, we give you a tour of the courses. Let’s dive in!

What topics are covered in ShareGate’s Microsoft 365 courses for IT admins? 

The Microsoft 365 admin courses offered through our Microsoft 365 Maturity Program are designed to deepen your knowledge and provide actionable tips for improving your Microsoft 365 management skills.

You’ll also learn about site-specific policies and resources you can use to manage your environment more efficiently.

Each course is less than an hour long, so you can quickly gain insights and start optimizing your Microsoft 365 environment.

Here’s what you can expect to watch and learn from the courses:

1. How to optimize governance in your Microsoft 365 environment

IT governance is the framework that aligns your IT strategy with your business strategy and helps you balance your end users’ needs with your company’s security requirements. Microsoft 365 admins who know how to optimize their governance can improve productivity throughout the business, increase end-user satisfaction, reduce IT costs, and see an almost immediate reduction in support tickets the IT team has to juggle. 

2. How to increase Microsoft 365 adoption

Microsoft 365 plays a critical role in making remote and hybrid work more efficient, but only to the extent that employees adopt the tools they’re provided and use them in the right way. IT admins play an integral role in driving adoption, making it not only important to know how to monitor and measure Microsoft 365 adoption but also to understand the barriers to adoption and how to overcome them.  

3. How to reduce sprawl

While enabling self-service in your Microsoft 365 environment improves user productivity, it can also lead to sprawl. Left unmanaged, sprawl can cost your business in several ways, including unnecessary storage costs, reduced productivity when end users can’t find the files they need and security risks.

4. How to manage shadow IT

Shadow IT is a widespread problem that can introduce security risks, increase costs, and negatively impact collaboration. By implementing a self-service environment combined with good governance, Microsoft 365 admins can significantly reduce the temptation to use unsanctioned apps. But monitoring is also an important part of reducing the risks that Shadow IT poses to their organizations.  

5. How to improve security in Microsoft 365

With a platform as complex as Microsoft 365, the idea of self-service can feel like an IT manager’s worst nightmare. But it doesn’t have to be that way. With good governance and a solid understanding of the many resources Microsoft 365 provides, IT managers and admins can keep their Office 365 tenants secure by putting the right policies and processes in place and leveraging automation to make implementation a breeze.

Why is it important to keep doing Microsoft 365 training?

If there’s one thing we’ve learned in our 14 years of helping customers succeed in the Microsoft cloud, it’s that the only constant is change. In today’s fast-paced world, you have to be ready to pivot at the drop of a hat, and your Microsoft 365 environment needs to be able to keep up.

And let’s not forget about the latest trends that shape our behaviors and the innovations that shake things up completely.

Microsoft rolls out around ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​500 new features each year. There’s always something new to learn and understand the impact on your organization, but it can be tricky to determine what you should be focusing on and how to go about learning it. It’s a challenge to adapt your Microsoft 365 strategy, but staying on top of it all is crucial for success.

For every proposed change in your strategy, you’ll need to spend time learning how to best implement and test it and prepare to make it as smooth a transition as possible for your end users. ​​​​​​​

We know you’re holding down the Microsoft 365 fort like a real IT hero, but even heroes need some extra help. That’s why we created the Microsoft 365 Maturity Program!

Are there any prerequisites for taking these Microsoft 365 admin courses?

Nope! You can jump right into any course you want.

If you want to get the most out of your learning experience, a great place to start is by evaluating your Microsoft 365 environment’s current maturity level. Don’t worry; it’s easier than you think!

Our free Microsoft 365 maturity assessment tool makes it a breeze. The assessment tool will take you 5-10 minutes to complete. In the end, we’ll provide you with insights into how your environment is operating.

How do I choose the right ShareGate Microsoft training course for me?

Whether you’ve been in the Microsoft game for years or you’re just starting out, these courses will help you level up your tenant’s maturity. ​​​​​​​The Microsoft 365 Maturity Program consists of the following courses, all of which are free and can be taken at your own pace and in any order: ​​​

1. Optimize Microsoft 365 governance​​​​​​​
2. Improve Microsoft 365 security
3. Increase Microsoft 365 adoption
4. Reduce Microsoft 365 sprawl
5. Manage Microsoft 365 shadow IT

What will I learn in the Optimize Microsoft 365 governance course?

Of course, every IT leader knows the importance of good governance in managing teams. But the sudden and massive shift to remote and hybrid work caught everyone off guard.

A lot of organizations are now playing catchup and establishing or looking to optimize their organization’s governance policies to support new ways of working. 

Also, as IT teams are increasingly seeing the benefits of a self-serve model and adopting it in their organizations, they’re finding that having a solid governance strategy is key to doing that safely in their Microsoft 365 environment. So, if you’ve recently implemented a self-serve model or are still considering it, this course will explain ​​​​​​​the relationship between governance, security, and self-service and what a good governance strategy looks like for a self-serve Microsoft 365 self-serve environment.  

This course will also teach you how to create an effective governance strategy, including many of the things you and your leadership will need to consider when developing it, and how to effectively communicate your strategy to end users within your business.

You’ll also learn how to use a combination of Microsoft 365 governance best practices and automation to easily optimize your governance strategy once you roll it out.  ​​​​​​​

What will I learn in the Improve Microsoft 365 security course?

This course will cover the consequences of having a poor security strategy, such as the increased risk of cyber attacks, data breaches, and regulatory compliance issues. Then, we give you tips for optimizing your Microsoft 365 security. From there, we’ll dive into the relationship between security and self-service.  

Understanding this relationship is critical to creating an enabling environment for your end users. That means allowing them to use their Microsoft 365 apps in the ways that serve them best while still ensuring the security of your environment.

You’ll learn about the pros and cons of enabling self-service in your tenant and get a helpful list of recommendations that you can implement within Microsoft 365 to achieve the perfect balance between self-serve and security. Fortunately, many of the items on that list can be accomplished through automation, and this course will show you how.  

What will I learn in the Increase Microsoft 365 adoption course?

Adoption is key to ensuring that your company gets a good return on its investment in Microsoft 365. And improving adoption starts with building a strategy. This course will show you how.

If you didn’t have an adoption strategy in place when you deployed Microsoft 365, you’ll learn what the telltale signs of low adoption are and how to start improving it now.  

You’ll also learn about how self-service can impact Microsoft 365 adoption. The freedom and flexibility that a self-serve approach can provide end users can help boost adoption and save your IT team a lot of support time. But many IT admins still have reservations about enabling self-service, which often stems from security concerns. In this course, you’ll learn how you can have the best of both worlds—a secure self-serve environment that will deliver a better end-user experience with a combination of guardrails and automation. 

You’ll learn best practices for increasing Microsoft 365 adoption, including the policies and processes you can put in place that will encourage adoption. And how to set specific and measurable yet realistic goals for adoption in your business and how to use automation to monitor and track your goals. 

What will I learn in the Reduce Microsoft 365 sprawl course?

Microsoft 365 is all about empowering end users to work in ways that work best for them. But with the freedom that a self-service environment provides, sprawl can quickly become a problem.

Unmanaged sprawl can result in unnecessary storage costs, lost productivity, and security risks. A cluttered environment makes it harder for end users to find the files they need and harder for you to ensure those files are properly protected.

This course will show you how to manage sprawl in your Microsoft 365 environment without hindering end-user productivity. You’ll learn about policies and processes you can put in place to mitigate sprawl, how to use provisioning templates to help reduce it, and how to leverage automation to maintain an efficient and organized Microsoft 365 environment. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ 

What will I learn in the Manage Microsoft 365 shadow IT course?

Shadow IT is a widespread problem, and it’s harder than ever to stay on top of it in hybrid and remote work environments. This course will illustrate just how big a problem shadow IT really is and why you need to proactively take steps to reduce its use in your business.

Why do users turn to shadow IT? We break it down in this course and how to minimize their temptation to use an unsanctioned device or software. For example, implementing self-service in your environment removes some of the friction end users might be encountering in their day-to-day work. 

This course will also introduce you to policies and processes you can put in place to improve app security and reduce the use of shadow IT and how to use automation to make it easier to monitor for and recognize its use in your Microsoft 365 environment.

Be the MVP of your Microsoft 365 team!

More than ever, IT pros are feeling the squeeze to keep up with the rapidly changing world of work and the technologies that support it. Finding time for professional development can be difficult. The courses cover critical aspects of Microsoft 365 management, so you can tackle any pain points in your tenant like a superhero. After all, even superheroes need training to stay ahead of the game.

The best part? It’s free and on-demand. So what are you waiting for? Let’s level up your Microsoft 365 game!