Best way to learn SharePoint Administration: Learn SharePoint online administration step by step from Microsoft 365

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In this “SharePoint Administration” tutorial, we will learn about SharePoint online administration step by step in the Office 365 SharePoint admin center.

Key-Highlights: Learn SharePoint online administration (SharePoint Online admin center)

• Introduction:
• SharePoint Online administration step-by-step process.
• Registration to office 365 E3 trial account:
• Reports available on the modern home page:
• Bulk Edit in the modern admin center:
• Policy in the modern admin center:
• Centrally settings in the modern admin center:
• How do we land classic features from the modern admin center?
• How do we navigate to the classic/old site collection to create a page?
• Learn SharePoint step by step
• Data migration tool from modern admin center:
• Summary:
• See Also:
• References :

Introduction: SharePoint administration

Introduction to SharePoint Online administration – today we’ll learn about the various features of the modern SharePoint Online admin center – but before heading on that, we’ll recap about what is SharePoint administration in on-premise SharePoint.

In simple words, the SharePoint central administration is an IIS web application that gets created automatically during the installation of a SharePoint product. This web application becomes the center or hub of all web applications, using this we can create a new application, site collection and manage them, and also we can share the resources across all web applications, there are many kinds of stuff we can deal with but at the high level, this is all about SharePoint administration in on-premise.

When it comes to SharePoint online it is a bit different we cannot create a new web application, all site collections/sites are created under one web application, and also we cannot create or configure any service applications, these are maintained by Microsoft itself but the core concept of administering SharePoint online and on-premise are same. As the user adoption has been changing over the modern technology, SharePoint also rapidly is changing in that race – as a result as of now(July 2019) we have two types of SharePoint Admin centers:

1. Modern SharePoint admin center and
2. Classic SharePoint admin center

Of course, the classic admin center is elder than the other one. Now we’ll explore the modern admin center.

Registration to office 365 E3 trial account: Microsoft 365 admin center

Registration to office 365 E3 trial account – If you have already a Microsoft office 365 tenant and have global admin access you can play around with the admin center site but if you don’t have the purchased tenant you can subscribe to the trial office 365 tenant.

For a free subscription go to the below link and complete the registration, The below sample screenshot is given rest is self-explanatory you can complete the registration.

Click here to go to the registration page.

Note: I personally prefer to explore the trial tenant than the actual one.

How to log in to the Microsoft 365 admin center or office 365 admin center?

1. Go to this Office 365 link.
2. Sign in using your Office 365 Admin login details(just before during which login you have created).

This is the landing page we’ll get.

SharePoint admin center – Office 365

And click on the “Admin” link as highlighted below:

Then we’ll land on this Microsoft 365 admin center page – click on “Show all” from the left panel as highlighted below:

Then little scroll down the left vertical bar we’ll see the below SharePoint:

Note:

• After creating the new trial tenant – we’ll not see the “SharePoint” here immediately this takes time to get it provisioned, so be patient. It might take 30 – 40 minutes.

Click on “SharePoint” then we’ll land on the SharePoint Admin Center home page:
https://-admin.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/online/AdminHome.aspx#/home

Before the modern SharePoint Admin center the landing page was:

Now we’ll explore all options available in the modern SharePoint Admin center.

Reports available on the SharePoint admin center home page:

• SharePoint file activity report
• SharePoint site usage report
• Message Center
• Service Health

SharePoint file activity report:

As the name implies, this gives a details activity report graphically of each file type for the last 30 days, like Viewed or Edited, Synched, Shared Internally, and Shared Externally, etc.

Note: If an activity occurs multiple times in one day on the same file, the file is counted only once for that day.

SharePoint site usage report:

This gives a detailed graph of total and active sites for the last 30 days. The “Active” sites are anywhere users view a page or view, modify, upload, download, share, or sync a file.

Message Center:

It is an announcement or news which comes automatically from Microsoft about their new release, product or feature, in this section of the home page, we can read official announcements about new and changed SharePoint features to help us manage upcoming changes. please see the example below, click on All active messages to sort and filter the list of messages across all Office 365 services.

Service Health:

In the Service health section of the home page, we can see whether the SharePoint Online service is healthy, or if it’s experiencing an active advisory or incident, click on “View all services” to know more about all services, then we’ll land on the service health detailed page, which gives the health status of each type of service.

If we put it all together the admin center home page looks like the below:

Sites report in the SharePoint admin center:

• Active Sites
• Deleted Sites

Active Sites:

This is the master site report – using this we can manage all sites, and can do the below stuff.

• Create a Site
• Delete Site
• Manage the site owner
• Manage the Hub site
• Manage the Site Sharing
• Export the site consolidated report as CSV
• Search the sites with name, URL, etc.
• Filter the sites based on various inbuilt views.
• Customizing the columns.
• Bulk Edit

How to land into this Active Sites report?

From the SharePoint, admin center home page, go to Sites -> Active Sites.

Then we’ll land on Active sites home page:

+create Site:

If we click on the + Create button we’ll get the site creation UI – by default Team Site template is selected, however, we can select the Communication site template as well, and proceed to the next step of the site creation page, it is self-explanatory.

Site creation page – SharePoint Admin Center:

Select the site as mentioned below and click on three dots(…) – using this we can manage the site owners.

To manage the hub site, sharing, and deletion follow the below steps:

Note:

• For hub site management, you may refer to my other article on how to create hub site in SharePoint online for more detailed information on hub sites.

Deleted Sites Report:

Click on the “Deleted sites” link as mentioned below then we’ll get all deleted sites, using this report we can restore the deleted sites or permanently can delete the sites, and also unlike active sites we can search all deleted sites from the search sites box.

Notes:

• After deleting the site, the deleted site will be retained in this location for 93 days.
• Deleted Office 365 groups are retained for only 30 days…so we cannot delete the office 365 group connected site for 30 days permanently, as this deleted site is office 365 group connected the “Permanently delete” site button is disabled.
• If you delete the root site for your organization, all your SharePoint sites will be inaccessible until you restore the site or create a new root site.

SharePoint admin center – Office 365 – Microsoft 365 admin center

To permanently delete sites (including Office 365 group-connected team sites) use the below PowerShell command:

Remove-SPODeletedSite -Identity https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/sitetoremove

Export the active sites report in CSV:

We can export the all active sites into a CSV file – for this need to click on the Export button as mentioned below:

Example of downloaded sites CSV report:

Searching the active sites:

Type site name or URL in the search site box as mentioned below and hit the enter key.

Views in Active Sites:

Views in Active Sites – exactly like the SharePoint document library we have various built-in views site report view, using this based on various criteria /needs we can view the active sites.

Customizing the view columns:

To customize the view column, click on “Customize columns” as mentioned below.

Select the columns as per the need and click on the Apply button.

Bulk Edit in the SharePoint admin center:

Using Bulk edit we can manage Sharing and hub sites association for multiple sites at a time. For this we need to follow the below as mentioned go to Active Sites -> select multiple sites as per your need -> Click on the three dots(…) button -> click on the “Bulk edit” dropdown list -> Go for Sharing or Hub Association as per your need. For hub association, you may refer to the overview of the Hub Site article.

Using this section, we can centrally manage the below policies:

• Sharing and
• Access Control

Sharing – SharePoint admin center:

Use these settings to control sharing at the organization level in SharePoint and OneDrive. We can do the following settings activity with respect to “Sharing”

• External Sharing
• Files and Folder Links
• Other Settings

Access Control – SharePoint admin center:

Use these settings to restrict how users are allowed to access content in SharePoint and OneDrive. To manage the access control navigate to Policies -> Access Control

 

We can do the following settings activity with respect to “Access Control”

• Unmanaged devices: Restrict access from devices that aren’t compliant or joined to a domain.
• Idle session sign-out: Automatically sign out users from inactive browser sessions.
• Network location: Allow access only from specific IP addresses.
• Apps that don’t use modern authentication: Block access from Office 2010 and other apps that can’t enforce device-based restrictions.

 

Unmanaged Devices
Idle Session Sign-out
Network Location
Apps that don’t use modern authentication

Centrally settings in the SharePoint admin center:

Using this we can control which features are available to your users. Navigate to this click on the “Settings” button as mentioned below:

Using this we can centrally manage the below settings:

• Notifications: Let users get device notifications about file activity and news
• Site storage limits: Manage site storage automatically or set specific storage limits
• Default admin experience: Open the new or classic SharePoint admin center by default
• Site creation: Set default settings for creating new sites

How do we land classic features from the modern admin center?

As I mentioned earlier this is a new link in modern SharePoint administration – earlier in classic UI this was not available. In fact, when used to type the https://-admin.sharepoint.com Jump in classic days, we used to directly land in this SharePoint administration but in modern administration, we need to navigate this way, need to click on as mentioned “Classic features” link

In the classic SharePoint admin center, we had the below SharePoint objects under a single page but for each configuration, we have a separate page.

• Term store: Create and manage term sets to help users enter data consistently.
• User profiles: Add and remove admins for a user’s OneDrive, disable OneDrive creation for some users, and more.
• Search: Help users find what they’re looking for.
• Apps: Configure SharePoint Store settings, monitor app usage, manage app licenses, and more.
• BCS: Manage connections to data sources like Azure SQL databases or WCF web services.
• Secure store: Create and set the credentials for Target Applications used for BCS connections.
• Records management: Manage records in a Records Center site that serves as an archive.
• InfoPath: Enable browser-based InfoPath forms.
• Hybrid picker: Use this wizard to automate some of the steps in setting up a hybrid environment.
• Sharing: This is a separate section in the modern SharePoint Online admin center, already we have discussed this above.
• Setting: This is a separate section in the modern SharePoint Online admin center, already we have discussed this above.
• Access Control: This is a separate section in the modern SharePoint Online admin center, already we have discussed this above.
• Data Migration: We’ll see below.

Term Store
User Profiles
Search
Apps
BCS
Secure Store
Records Management
Infopath
Hybrid Picker

Notes:

•  Hybrid Picker: Using the Hybrid picker tool we can configure the search, Manage Metadata groups, content types, etc in hybrid mode. Example: We can search the on-premise content from SharePoint online search center.

How do we navigate to the classic/old site collection to create a page?

Click on “Classic features ->More classic features-> go to classic site collection page section -> click on open button.

Once we click on the “Open” button, we’ll land on the classic site collection creation page but one thing we can notice is that the left side panel is empty – this is the in modern SharePoint administration earlier in the classic administration page we had all the above-mentioned Term store, User profiles, Search, Apps, BCS, etc.

Data migration tool in the SharePoint admin center:

This is a Microsoft data migration tool, using this we can migrate the data to SharePoint sites. We can learn more about the data migration tool and download it from this URL: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointmigration/introducing-the-sharepoint-migration-tool Jump

Summary: SharePoint administration (Microsoft 365 admin center)

Today we have learned about various administering activities(listed below) from the SharePoint admin center.

• Introduction to the SharePoint Online admin center.
• SharePoint Online Administration step-by-step process
• Registration to office 365 E3 trial account:
• Reports available on the SharePoint Online admin center home page:
• Sites report in SharePoint Online admin center:
• Learn SharePoint Step by Step in 1 hour.
• Export the active sites report in CSV:
• Searching the active sites in SharePoint Online admin center.
• Views in Active Sites in SharePoint Online admin center.
• Customizing the view columns in the SharePoint Online admin center.
• Bulk Edit in SharePoint Online admin center.
• Learn SharePoint step by step
• Policy in SharePoint Online admin center.
• Centrally settings in SharePoint Online admin center.
• How do we land classic features from the SharePoint Online admin center?
• How do we navigate to the classic/old site collection to create a page?
• Data migration tool from SharePoint Online admin center:
• SharePoint admin center in office 365
• Get started with the new SharePoint admin center
• How to use the classic SharePoint admin center?
• what is the SharePoint admin portal URL?
• How do I get to the SharePoint admin center?
• How do I get to the classic SharePoint admin center URL?
• Learn SharePoint online step by step.
• What is the new SharePoint admin center URL?
• How to use the SharePoint admin center download?
• How to launch the modern SharePoint admin center?
• What is the new SharePoint admin center’s external sharing?

See Also: SharePoint Online tutorial

You may also like the below SharePoint Online tutorials:

• In 4 steps access SharePoint online data using postman
• In 2 steps convert a classic SharePoint page to modern using PnP
• Create modern team site using PnP PowerShell – SharePoint
• Learn about hub site in SharePoint admin center
• Tile View web part in modern SharePoint
• Navigation In SharePoint Online
• How to edit PDF from SharePoint online
• Office 365: Retrieve hub sites and associated sites using PnP Powershell
• Office 365: Where do the Microsoft Teams channel conversations and files get saved?
• SharePoint REST API: GET vs POST vs PUT vs DELETE vs PATCH

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