OneDrive, shown in Figure 2-5, is Microsoft’s cloud-based storage service. All the Microsoft 365 Business subscriptions include one terabyte of cloud storage per user. Microsoft 365 Enterprise subscriptions include 5 TB of cloud storage per user, with up to 25 TB available by administrator request.
FIGURE 2-5 The Microsoft OneDrive online interface
OneDrive is also the default cloud storage location for Microsoft 365 applications. For example, users can save Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote documents to OneDrive storage and share them with other users. This allows multiple users to access and edit a document simultaneously.
OneDrive support is included with the Windows operating systems 8.1 and later. OneDrive client applications are available for Windows and macOS desktops that provide users with access to their cloud storage and other features, such as file synchronization. Mobile versions of the OneDrive app are also available for Android and iOS, which enable users to access their cloud storage anywhere.
OneDrive is intended to be a personal cloud storage service, while OneDrive in Microsoft 365 is another form of Microsoft cloud storage implemented within SharePoint and provides additional collaboration features intended for business users, such as Content Approval.
Using the Microsoft 365 admin center
Because Microsoft 365 consists mostly of cloud-based services, administrators use web-based controls to manage them, and users can use web-based portals to access them. The individual services included with Microsoft 365, such as Exchange Online and SharePoint, are also available as separate products, so they have their own administrative portals called admin centers. However, the Microsoft 365 admin center is the main administrative portal for the product, and it provides access to all the individual portals as well.
When you sign on to the Microsoft 365 admin center at admin.microsoft.com, you see the Home screen shown in Figure 2-6, with a navigation menu in the left pane and a series of cards containing controls on the right. Administrators can place their most frequently used controls on the Home page by dragging items from the navigation menu to the right pane to add more cards.
FIGURE 2-6 The Microsoft 365 admin center Home screen
The navigation pane contains menus for control categories, with dropdowns for specific control types. The categories are as follows:
- Users Enables administrators to create, manage, and delete user accounts. By assigning licenses to accounts, users will be granted access to Microsoft 365 or other applications and services. Assigning administrative roles to users grants them privileges to access certain additional controls.
- Devices Enables administrators to add new devices, individually or in bulk, such as smartphones and tablets, create policies for securing the devices, and manage individual devices by resetting them, removing corporate data, or removing them entirely.
- Teams & Groups Enables administrators to create Microsoft Teams teams and various types of groups, including Microsoft 365, security, mail-enabled security, and distribution list groups, assign owners to them, and configure privacy settings. They can also create shared mailboxes for access by all members of a specific group.
- Roles Enables administrators to assign built-in Azure Active Directory roles to users to provide them with access to additional admin centers and other resources.
- Resources Enables administrators to create and configure rooms and equipment for assignment to meetings and create SharePoint sites and collections.
- SharePoint The SharePoint admin center provides full control over SharePoint, but this interface can control site sharing and remove external users.
- Billing Enables administrators to purchase additional Microsoft applications and services, manage product subscriptions, monitor available product licenses, and manage invoices and payments.
- Support Enables administrators to find solutions to common Microsoft 365 problems and create and view requests for service from Microsoft technicians.
- Settings Enables administrators to configure service settings and add-ins for the entire enterprise, configure security settings, and monitor partner relationships.
- Setup Enables administrators to monitor their Microsoft products and manage the licenses for those products, purchase or add Internet domains, and migrate data from outside email providers into Microsoft 365 accounts.
- Reports Enables administrators to generate various reports, such as email activity, active users, and SharePoint site usage, over intervals ranging from 7 to 180 days. Reports like these can indicate who is using the Microsoft 365 services heavily, who is near to reaching storage quotas, and who might not need a license at all.
- Health Enables administrators to monitor the operational health of the various Microsoft 365 services, read any incident and advisory reports that have been generated, and receive messages about product update availability and other topics.
- Admin Centers Enables administrators to open new windows containing the admin centers for the other services provided in Microsoft 365, including Security, Compliance, Azure Active Directory, Exchange, SharePoint, and Microsoft Teams.
Note Microsoft 365 admin center
Because the admin centers for the Microsoft 365 services are web-based, the product developers can easily modify them and add features as they become available without interrupting their users. The figures of the admin center controls in this book are taken from the interface design as it exists at the time of writing. Design and feature changes might have been introduced since the time of publication.