Much of the Microsoft 365 infrastructure is invisible to end users; their primary exposure is to the standard Office productivity applications, such as Word and Excel. The selection of productivity applications included with Microsoft 365 depends on the subscription plan the administrators choose for the organization.
Once an administrator has given users Microsoft 365 accounts, they can access the Office productivity applications and sign on to the Microsoft 365 user portal at https://portal.office.com. After a user signs in with the email address created by the administrator as part of their account, the Microsoft 365 portal appears, as shown in Figure 2-7.
FIGURE 2-7 The Microsoft 365 user portal
The Apps tiles on the portal’s Apps page provide the user access to the web-based versions of the Office productivity applications: Microsoft Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneDrive, and OneNote. Beneath the icons is a Get Work Done area providing the user with access to recently used, pinned, and shared document files stored in the user’s OneDrive cloud.
Farther down on the Apps page is an Explore By Category section that displays tiles for the other Microsoft 365 apps by default, as shown in Figure 2-8.
Clicking one of the application tiles on the Apps page opens the online version of the application. All Microsoft 365 subscriptions provide users access to the web and mobile versions of the Office productivity applications. With these versions, users can access the applications on virtually any device from any location with Internet access.
If the users’ subscription includes the desktop versions of the applications, the Microsoft 365 portal permits the user to install the Microsoft 365 applications on up to five systems. On the portal’s home page, clicking Install Apps and selecting Premium Microsoft 365 Apps opens the Get Started With Microsoft 365 page, as shown in Figure 2-9.
FIGURE 2-8 The Explore By Category section of the Microsoft 365 user portal Apps page
FIGURE 2-9 The Get Started With Microsoft 365 page in the Microsoft 365 user portal
The installation includes all the on-premises Office applications, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access, Publisher, and OneDrive. This is the only way for a Microsoft 365 user to run the Access and Publisher applications because they don’t have web or mobile versions.