The Office 365 admin center is the central location to control your Office 365 tenant:
An administrator is able to add new users, buy licenses, create service requests, configure Office 365 services such as Exchange or SharePoint and stay up-to-date about the status of the tenant. This is all possible by using the browser on your mobile device. During this whole series we have seen that using Apps can be very beneficial and productive. You don’t have to worry about browser compatibility. You start an App and get your work done! How can administrators perform their administrator tasks anywhere, anytime on any device? Microsoft launched the Office 365 Admin Center App.
iPad Office 365 Administrator Tasks
Although Office 365 is hosted by Microsoft, it’s still important for the company’s administrator to stay up-to-date about the status of all the services. Microsoft promises a high uptime but unfortunately this doesn’t guarantee there won’t be any issues with services. The home page of the Office 365 provides you with an overview of all your Office 365 services:
Apparently there is an issue with Exchange Online. Let’s take a look:
Every Office 365 services contains one or more sub services. The status of Management and Provision isn’t green. What’s going on? The following screen provides more detailed information:
You get a full overview of the issues with Management and Provisioning. The last screen available in the App shows you maintenance announcements:
You are now up-to-date with all service issues and upcoming maintenance.
iPhone Office 365 Administrator Tasks
The iPhone App isn’t any different than the other mobile Apps. This must be actually the first App with no difference in features between all mobile devices. The following figure shows an example of the App:
Surface RT Office 365 Administrator Tasks
Unfortunately I have to mention something negative about the Surface RT again. There isn’t an Office 365 Admin App available. We have one for the Windows Phone 8, iPhone and iPad but Surface RT is left out. Come on Microsoft! The alternative is using the RSS feed:
Load this RSS feed in your favorite RSS reader or use Outlook 2013.
Windows Phone 8 Office 365 Administrator Tasks
The Windows Phone 8 Office 365 has the same features as the iPad and iPhone. The following figure illustrates an example:
Conclusion on Office 365 Administrator Tasks
You probably start to think by now, that’s it? Yes, this is it! The Office 365 Admin App is great to stay up-to-date about the status of your Office 365 Tenant. Unfortunately that’s the only feature available. It’s literally nothing more than a RSS reader with an Office 365 branding. There is a lot missing. I would like to see an alert feature in future updates. At this moment I have to open the App to see if there are issues with my tenant. For tablets it would be great to get a notification and for mobile phones a text message.
Where are the other administrator tasks? Why can’t I add a new service request? Or a new user? The name of the App is very misleading because at the moment it’s just an RSS reader showing you the RSS feed of your Office 365 tenant. There is much to be approved in future versions of this App.
This is the table of contents of this series:
- Part 1 – Introduction to working on Office 365
- Part 2 – Working with Personal Documents from SkyDrive Pro
- Part 3 – Collaborating on Team Documents
- Part 4 – Communicating with Colleagues using email
- Part 5 – Communicate with colleagues through chat on Office 365 from any device
- Part 6 – Communicate with colleagues using Social with Office 365 on any Device
- Part 7 – Taking Notes with OneNote on any Device with Office 365
- Part 8 – Perform Office 365 Administrator Tasks
I hope you will find these posts useful and insightful. Please, don’t hesitate to leave your feedback.
This article is a guest post by Jasper Oosterveld. A member of the SharePoint community, co-author of two books and speaker for many SharePoint Conferences and SharePoint Saturdays. If you are looking for Jasper, you’ll find him working for Macaw straight from the Netherlands!
