Streamlining Office 365 management with ADManager Plus
Challenge
Today, organizations are looking to cloud platforms such as Office 365 for widespread access to resources regardless of location and easy collaboration between employees. But despite these advantages, the transition to the cloud can place a heavy burden on IT administrators.
Aside from juggling both on-premises and cloud environments, admins have to provision and manage user identities, access to cloud-based resources, and cloud platform licenses. To manage Office 365, IT admins have to grapple with Active Directory (AD) tools, the Office 365 admin center, the Exchange admin center, PowerShell, and more.
The challenges of Office 365 user provisioning and license management
User provisioning
Using native tools for user provisioning requires several time-consuming steps, including user creation in on-premises AD; copying all information such as users, groups, and contacts from on-premises AD to Office 365; and finally, assigning licenses. The challenges associated with this complex process include:
- Toggling between multiple tools to provision users.
- Delays in DirSync replication, which leads to user accounts being unavailable in Office 365 immediately after creation.
License management
When managing Office 365 licenses from the Office 365 admin center, there's no way for admins to filter users based on a logical division such as organizational unit (OU) or group. For example, it's not possible for an organization to filter users belonging to a particular OU and revoke their licenses using Office 365 admin center..
Solution
User provisioning
Admins need a tool that gives them the flexibility to create a new user account in both on-premises AD and Office 365, all from a single, web-based console. This will eliminate the inconvenience of toggling between multiple tools and cut down on the time it takes to perform user provisioning.
License management
The optimal Office 365 management tool should have a provision for filtering Office 365 users based on OUs, which represent logical divisions such as department or location, as well as provisions for assigning, revoking, and replacing Office 365 licenses.
How ADManager Plus manages Office 365
ADManager Plus effectively streamlines user provisioning and license management for Office 365. It allows admins to create bulk user accounts simultaneously in both AD and Office 365, as well as assign appropriate licenses to these newly created users all in one single step. Admins can also create Office 365 user accounts in bulk for existing on-premises user accounts. Using ADManager Plus, admins can filter Office 365 users based on OU and manage Office 365 licenses for these users as well.
This solution helps assign licenses to both new and existing users as well as revoke or replace licenses already applied to existing users in bulk. Admins can perform Exchange Online tasks such as modifying mail-enabled security and distribution groups, disabling or deleting remote mailboxes, disabling or enabling email forwarding, and delegating mailboxes. Using ADManager Plus, admins can also create shared and resource mailboxes in Office 365.
Summary
IT admins that struggle to manage Office 365 user provisioning using multiple tools—such as native AD tools, the Office 365 admin center, the Exchange admin center, and PowerShell—need a tool that provides the flexibility to simultaneously create a new user account in both on-premises AD and Office 365. Using ADManager Plus' Office 365 management feature, admins can:
- Provision AD and Office 365 users and simultaneously assign them licenses.
- Manage their Office 365 and on-premises Active Directory environments from a single, web-based console.
- Manage Office 365 licenses (assign/revoke) for all desired users in bulk.
- Perform Exchange Online tasks; for example, modify mail-enabled security and distribution groups, disable or delete remote mailboxes, disable or enable email forwarding, delegate mailboxes, and more.
- Create shared and resource mailboxes in Office 365.
