How can I help ensure my Office 365 data is as secure as possible?

Microsoft has an excellent tool, the Office 365 Secure Score, to help you understand what your organization has done to reduce the risk to your data in Office 365 as well as show you what steps you can take to further reduce that risk. The tool is available to anyone who has admin permissions for an Office 365 Business Premium or Enterprise subscription. If you would like assistance reviewing and…

My organization is working towards compliance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation. How can I effectively bring our Office 365 services into this effort?

Microsoft has recently launched the Compliance Manager Preview, which can help you assess how well your implementation of Office 365 is meeting various standards and regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), ISO 27001, and ISO 27018. Once signed in to the preview, you just need to click Add Assessment. Select Office 365 under the Select Product dropdown and click Next. Select the Assessment, give it a name,…

How can I change the plan one of my Office 365 users is on?

As an Office 365 administrator, you can easily change one or two of your users to a different Office 365 plan (versus the whole team). Log in to the Office 365 portal and click on the Admin tile. If you already have a subscription to the plan you need to change the user(s) to, click on Subscriptions under Billing on the left.  Select the subscription you want to change the…

Can I make an additional user an administrator on my Office 365 account?

If you are currently an administrator on your Office 365 account, you can make any other users that are part of your Office 365 account administrators as well.  Log in to the Office 365 portal and select the Admin tile. Click on Users on the left, then Active Users. Click the box to the left of the user that you want to make an administrator, then on the right select…

How can I tell how much storage space our user have available in their mailboxes?

If you are an administrator on your organization’s Office 365 account, you can see how much data each of your users has in their mailbox as well as how much space they have left available.  Start by signing in to the Office 365 portal and clicking on the grey tile labeled Admin.  Then select Exchange on the left under Admin centers.  Click on mailboxes under recipients, then double click on the…

Is there an easy way for one of our users to capture the exact steps they are taking to produce a particular result in Office 365?

On Windows 7 and later machines, there is a neat tool called Problem Steps Recorder.  You can use this tool to capture the steps needed to complete a certain task in Office 365 or to document the steps that are generating an error for troubleshooting purposes.  To open Problem Steps Recorder, type psr in the machine’s search box. When the Problem Steps Recorder opens, click Start Record. Then simply go through the steps…

How can I make sure email from one of our clients does not go into our junk email folders?

You can put in place a rule that will “whitelist” any domains you choose.  Emails from this domain will bypass Office 365’s spam filter, so be sure to choose any domains you do this for carefully. Log in to the Exchange admin center, and on the left, select mail flow. Click on the “+” to create a new rule.  Select More options… at the bottom.  Enter a name for the rule,…

How do I create a new permission group in SharePoint?

Navigate in your browser to the SharePoint site for which you would like to create the new group.  In the upper right corner, click on the gear, then on Site Settings. Click on People and groups under Users and Permissions. Select More… on the left to see a list of all groups already on the site. Select New Group under New. Enter a name for the new group and a description if…

How do I change the permissions on a document library folder in SharePoint?

Provided you have the appropriate administrative permissions yourself, you will start by navigating in your browser to the Document Library folder you would like to change the permissions for. Click on the three dots to the right of the folder and then the three dots to the right of Share. Click on Shared With and then Advanced. Select Stop Inheriting Permissions at the top. You can then select any of the groups…

My team has a list of contacts we all need access to. How can I use Office 365 to house this information?

There are a number of different ways you can centrally store information in Office 365 for contacts outside of your organization.  Which option you should choose largely depends on how your users need to access and update the information. Exchange Online Contacts – allows you to create external contacts that will appear as part of your Global Address List.  Users can find the contacts in their Outlook Address Book or by searching the company directory on their mobile device.  You…