What’s new in Office 365 administration—June update

Additional user management options, enhanced export capabilities and better guidance on next steps are some of the improvements we focused on in June to improve existing features in the new Office 365 admin center. Of course, we all love completely new features, but we want to make sure that the new admin center really makes it easier, faster and more efficient for you to manage Office 365. Based on your feedback, we took a critical look at the existing features to see how we can further improve them to provide you with the best management experience possible.

Here’s a summary of the June updates:

Updates for the new Office 365 admin center

Get tips on how to get started quickly—Most of you use some areas and capabilities of the admin center more heavily than others. The reason is often that admins aren’t fully aware of all the capabilities that the admin center provides or how a specific feature could help you to increase the value of Office 365. To help you get started, tips and quick links on pages that you visit for the first time or that you don’t use on a regular basis are now displayed at the bottom of a page. You will find the tips at the bottom of the Groups, Shared mailboxes, Rooms & equipment, Active users and Contacts pages.

Additional user management capabilities—The new admin center now enables you to export the list of active users directly from the Active users page by clicking Export in the upper right corner. In addition, we updated the user card to show the job title and department of each user at the top of the card.

Easily see who you have assigned a license to—We updated the Subscriptions page so that you can now directly see which users you have assigned with a specific license. This has been a frequently requested feature from many of you to help you better manage your licenses. Now, when you click Assigned on the Subscriptions page, a list of the users that you have assigned that specific license to is displayed.

Get guidance on next steps—When you complete an action in the admin center, you often want to follow up with another action. For example, if you add a user, as a next step you may want to share details with the user on how to get started using Office 365. Or if you create a room, editing the booking options is often the next logical action. To help you accomplish those next steps faster—such as add, delete or block a user, add a shared mailbox, add a contact or create a room—suggested Next Steps are now displayed directly in the confirmation window.

Get tips on how to manage Office 365 more effectively—Office 365 is a rapidly evolving product making new features and functionality available to end users as well as to admins on a regular basis. We want to make sure you get the most out of using and managing Office 365. The new Office 365 Tips provide you with tips and tricks on how to take full advantage of the service and are especially helpful when you’re new to Office 365. Learn how to create another admin, manage Office 365 from the admin app or quickly add more users. To access Office 365 Tips, click the Office 365 Tips card on the home dashboard.

More to come—In the coming month, we’ll be adding additional reports, support for partner managed admin centers, new admin roles and additional set-up guidance.

Let us know what you think!

Try the new features and provide feedback using the feedback link in the lower right corner of the admin center. If you’re missing a feature, take a look at the Recently Added page that is linked to directly from the home page. Are you missing a feature? Please send us a note using the feedback link. And don’t be surprised if we respond to your feedback. We truly read every piece of feedback that we receive to make sure the Office 365 administration experience meets your needs.

—Anne Michels, @Anne_Michels, senior product marketing manager for the Office 365 Marketing team

Please note: the features mentioned in this blog post have started to roll out worldwide. If they are not available yet for your organization, please check back in a few days!