Modern SharePoint Online Admin Center - Step By Step Process

Table of Contents

 

In this article today, we’ll learn about the various administration activities of SharePoint Online Modern Admin Center.

• Introduction to SharePoint Online Admin Center
• Registration to Office 365 E3 trial account
• Reports available in the modern home page
• Sites report in the modern admin center
• Export the active sites report in CSV
• Searching the active sites
• Views in Active Sites
• Customizing the view columns
• Bulk Edit in the modern admin center
• Policy in the modern admin center
• Centrally settings in the modern admin center
• How do we land to classic features from the modern admin center
• How do we navigate to the classic/old site collection create page
• Data migration tool from the modern admin center

Introduction to SharePoint Online Admin Center

 

Today we’ll learn about the various features of modern SharePoint Online Admin Center – but before that let's look at SharePoint Administration of on-premise SharePoint. In simple words, the SharePoint Central Administration is an IIS web application, which gets created automatically during the installation of the SharePoint product. This web application becomes central or the hub of all web applications developed and hosted via SharePoint. Using this, we can create a new application or site collection and manage them and also, we can share the resources across all web applications.

 

When it comes to SharePoint Online, it runs differently. 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 but the core concept of administering SharePoint Online and on-premise are same. As user adoption has been changing over modern technology, SharePoint is also rapidly changing in that race.

 

There are two types of SharePoint Admin Center.

 

1) Modern admin center and

2) Classic admin center.

 

Of course, the classic admin center is an older one. Now, we’ll explore the modern admin center.

 

Registration to Office 365 E3 trial account

 

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

 

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

 

 

Note
I personally prefer to explore on the trial tenant.

 

How to login to the office 365 admin center?

1. Go the below link.

2. Sign in using your Office 365 Admin login details that you've created earlier.

This is the landing page we’ll get.

 

 

 

And click on the “Admin” link.

 

Then we’ll land into this page - https://admin.microsoft.com/AdminPortal/Home#/homepage

 

 

 

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

 

 

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 up to 30 to 40 minutes. 

 

Click on “SharePoint” then we’ll land into SharePoint Admin Center home page: https://<yourtenantname>-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 home page

The following reports are available on the home page:

• Files by activity type
• Total and active sites
• Message Center
• Service Health

Files by activity type

 

This report gives a detailed 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.

 

 

Pic: Files by Activity type, click on details to get more files activity log.

 

Total and active sites

 

This report 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.

 

 

Pic: Total and active sites, click on details to get more sites activity log.

 

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.

 

Pic: Message center, click on “All Active Messages” to get all active messages by Microsoft.

 

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 into the service health detailed page, this gives the health status of each type of service.

 

Pic: Service Health

 

 

Pic: service health detailed page.

 

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

 

 

Sites report in the modern 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
• Mange 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 view.
• Customizing the columns.
• Bulk Edit

How to land into this Active Sites report?

 

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

 

 

Then we’ll land into Active sites home page,

 

 

Create Site

 

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

 

 

Site creation page

 

 

Select the site as mentioned below and click on three dots – using this we can manage the site owners, Hub site management, Sharing and delete the site.

 

 

Note
For hub sites management, you may refer my another article overview of Hub Sites for more detailed information on hub sites.

 

Deleted Sites Report

 

Click on “Deleted sites” link as mentioned below then we’ll get the 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.

 

Note

1. After deleting the site, the deleted site will be retained in this location for 93 days.
2. 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.
3. 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.
   
   

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 Export button as mentioned below.

 

 

Example of downloaded sites CSV report (you may download it from here).

 

 

Search 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

 

Exactly like SharePoint document library, we have various built-in views site report view, using this based on various criteria /need 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 Apply button.

 

 

Bulk Edit

 

Using Bulk edit, we can manage Sharing and hub sites association for the 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 three dots(…) button -> click on “Bulk edit” dropdown list -> Go for Sharing or Hub Association as per your need. For hub association, you may refer to the overview of Hub Sites article.

 

 

Policy in the Admin Center

 

Using this section, we can centrally manage the policies

• Sharing
• Access Control

Sharing

 

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

 

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”

1. Unmanaged devices: Restrict access from devices that aren't compliant or joined to a domain.
2. Idle session sign-out: Automatically sign out users from inactive browser sessions.
3. Network location: Allow access only from specific IP addresses.
4. 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 modern admin center

 

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

 

 

Using this we can centrally manage the below settings,

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

Notifications:
Site storage limits:
Default admin experience:
Site creation:

 

 

How do we land to classic features from 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://<tenantname>-admin.sharepoint.com 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 classic SharePoint administration time, we had the below SharePoint objects under a single page but for each configuration, we have a separate page.

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

Term store:
User profiles:
Search:
Apps:
BCS:
Secure store:
Records management:
InfoPath:
Hybrid picker: Note: Using Hybrid picker tool we can configure the search, Manage Metadata group, content type 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 create page?

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

Classic(old) site collections page:	Modern (New) site collections page:

 

 

Data migration tool from modern admin center

 

This is a Microsoft data migration tool, using this we can migrate the data to SharePoint sites. We can learn more about data migration tool and download it from this URL.

 

Summarize - what we had here?

 

Today, we learned about various administering activities (highlighted below) in SharePoint Online Modern Admin Center. The ppt version of the SharePoint online administering (focused on classic mode but the core concept is the same) document, can be downloaded from here.

• Introduction to SharePoint Online admin center:
• Registration to office 365 E3 trial account:
• Reports available in the modern home page:
• Sites report in the modern admin center:
• Export the active sites report in CSV:
• Searching the active sites:
• Views in Active Sites:
• Customizing the view columns:
• Bulk Edit in the modern admin center:
• Policy in the modern admin center:
• Centrally settings in the modern admin center:
• How do we land to classic features from modern admin center?
• How do we navigate to the classic/old site collection create page?
• Data migration tool from modern admin center:

Read Also

• Overview Of Hub Sites In SharePoint Online
• Promoted Links Web Part In SharePoint Online Modern Page
• Navigation In SharePoint Online

References

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/sharepoint-online
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/what-s-new-in-admin-center
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/manage-sites-in-new-admin-center