General Tips and Tricks for better Office 365 Administration

  If you know nothing about Office 365, you've come to the right place.

These general tips and tricks will get you started on the road to Office 365 administration.
Here are a few thing basic things that you need to know to make your life easier.

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Keep your Office 365 Administrator account - Cloud only.
What this mean is, is that is important keep the Office 365 Admin account with the original .onmicrosoft.com domain suffix. For example, when I created a new trial tenant in one of my tutorials, the admin account was - admin@example.onmicrosoft.com -

It is important to keep the same login UPN (UserPrincipalName) rather than assigning your private email address. This is important for two reasons.
- If you have DNS issues with your private domain, you can still log in and administer the tenant.
- If you have issues with your Hybrid - Cloud environment, your Office 365 tenant administrator will not be affected.

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Ensure your UPN (login ID) and primary email address match.
This is pretty much a given, and Microsoft stress this in all their documentation, but it is only when you administer an environment where they don't match, that you realise how much easier it is for your end users.

The issue becomes apparent in large Enterprises where the business has ADFS and users have a different login ID (UPN - User Principal Name) to their email address. When the environment has this mis-match of credentials and email address, the terminology during login and Outlook profile creation causes confusion. Outlook prompts for the email address, but it really wants is the login ID (User Principal Name). As you can see, this is much easier for clients if the login ID and UPN match.
So unless you inherit an environment you cannot change, just ensure your login ID and UPN match. Your clients will love you for it.

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Choose your browser wisely -
Choosing the correct browser and browser mode will save your sanity. I use a few Golden Rules to ensure I minimise potential issues with browsers

*** Golden Rule #1 -
Thou shalt not use Microsoft Edge - No exceptions

*** Golden Rule #2 -
Thou shalt tell thy users to only use Internet Explorer.
IE provides the best experience for end users by far. You can easily add the Office 365 URLs to IE 'Protected Sites' to minimise issues, especially if clients want to map drives to SharePoint online.

*** Golden Rule #3 -
Administrators shalt use only Chrome or Internet Explorer.
- Chrome first, but when in doubt, use Internet Explorer
Chrome and IE are the only browsers that work perfectly, pretty much in all circumstances for Administrators. Personally I use Chrome, but many other professionals choose Firefox. I personally only use IE for eDiscovery as Chrome doesn't currently work when exporting to PST.

*** Golden Rule  #4 -
Administrators shalt always use Incognito mode (Chrome) or Private Browsing (IE).
If you're an administrator for multiple tenants, you will quickly come across issues if you do not use private browsing or Incognito mode. This is because the browser will sometimes cache credentials in the background of the browser, even after logging out of and logging back into the Office portal.
Always use Incognito or Private browsing and this will virtually never happen.

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