When you sign up your organization for Office 365 Small Business, you’re designated as the admin. The admin has access to all features in the Office 365 portal and can:
Important Admins who forget their passwords can reset their own passwords. When you assign admin permissions to someone, make sure to include an alternate email address that isn’t associated with Office 365, and, if your organization has a custom domain that is set up to use with Office 365, include the number of a mobile phone—including the country code—that can receive a text (SMS) message.
What do you want to do?
Assign or remove admin permissions for an existing user
- Go to Admin > Users & groups.
- On the Users page, select the person you want to assign or remove permissions for, and then click Edit
.
- Click Settings. On the Settings page, under Assign permissions, click Yes or No to assign or remove admin permissions.
- If you chose No, you are done and can click Save. If you chose Yes, continue with the next two steps.
- In the Alternate email address box, type an email address that isn’t associated with Office 365. This email address is used for important notifications, like the instructions to reset an admin's password, so the person must be able to access the email account even when they can’t access Office 365. Then click Save
Note If you don’t want the person to receive product-related communications at their alternate email address, tell them they can change their contact preferences on their Me page. For more information, see Change your contact preferences.
- Go to the Details page for the user by clicking Details. Click the arrow next to Additional details, and in the Mobile phone box, type the number of a mobile phone—including the country code—that can receive a text (SMS) message, if the user has one. This phone number is also used in the reset passwords for admins process.
Note An admin needs a mobile phone that’s capable of receiving text messages for password reset only if the organization has a custom domain that is set up to use with Office 365.
- When you’ve finished, click Save.
Assign or remove admin permissions for multiple users
Use this procedure to assign or remove admin permissions for multiple existing users.
- Go to Admin > Users & groups.
- On the Users page, check the box next to the names of the users whose admin roles you want to change, and then click Edit .
- On the Details page, click Next.
- On the Settings page, under Assign permissions, click Yes or No to assign or remove admin permissions, and then click Next.
- On the Assign licenses page, click Submit.
- On the Results page, review your results, and then click Finish.
Manage user access through admin service settings and SharePoint Online settings
Admins can also control access to specific features or functionality in Office 365. For Office 365 Admin service settings, go to Admin > Service settings.
Email, calendar, and contacts: Exchange Online
- Turn on calendar publishing so people can share information: With Office 365, people in your organization can publish their calendars to the Internet so people outside the organization can see them. Calendar publishing is turned on by default. However, as an admin, you can turn it off.
- Manage how people use Places in your organization: As admin, you can control whether people can search, share, and map location details using the Bing Maps app from Outlook Web App and Outlook 2013. Places is turned on by default for most Office 365 service plans or regions that support it.
- Manage Facebook contact sync in your organization: Facebook contact synchronization lets people set up a connection between their Facebook account and their Office 365 account using Outlook Web App. After they set up a Facebook connection, all of their Facebook friends are listed as contacts in People in Office 365. Facebook contact sync is turned on by default if the feature is available in your region.
- Manage LinkedIn contact sync in your organization: LinkedIn contact synchronization lets people set up a connection between their LinkedIn account and their Office 365 account using Outlook Web App. After they set up LinkedIn contact sync, all of their LinkedIn connections are listed as contacts in People in Office 365. LinkedIn contact sync is turned on by default if the feature is available for your region.
- Create and use external contacts: External contacts represent people outside your organization who can be displayed in your organization’s address book and other address lists. Only admins can create and delete external contacts.
- Create and use shared mailboxes: Shared mailboxes make it easy for a specific group of people to monitor and send email from a common account, like public email addresses, such as info@contoso.com or contact@contoso.com. Only admins can create and add users to a shared mailbox.
- Create and use distribution groups: Distribution groups make it easy to send an email message to lots of people at once. To create a group as an Admin, go to Admin > Users & groups > Groups. Users can also create distribution groups in Outlook Web App.
Site and documents sharing: SharePoint Online
- Introduction: Control user access with permissions: This article provides an overview of the elements that make up SharePoint permissions.
- Manage sharing with external users: The ability to invite external users to collaborate on documents on a team site or in SkyDrive Pro is turned on by default, but an Office 365 admin turn off external sharing for all sites so no future invitations can be sent.
- Let users create their own team sites: As the admin, you can let users in your company create their own team sites to manage their projects and documents. Site creation is turned on by default. The new team sites are created under the root SharePoint site—for example, http://contoso.sharepoint.com/newsite.
- Invite designers and reviewers to your website: This article explains how you can share your website with designers or reviewers outside your organization.
IM, meetings, and conferencing: Lync Online
- Configure Lync online presence: The online presence setting gives people more control over who can see whether they are available, in a meeting, or out of the office. As admin, you can set the default presence setting for everyone in your organization. By default, online presence is set to Everybody in your company.
- Let Lync Online users communicate outside your organization: As admin, you can decide whether users can add people outside your organization to their list of Lync contacts. External communications are on by default.
- Let people record their audio and video conferences: When recording is turned on, organizers or presenters can record a Lync (Lync: An Office program that provides instant messaging, a contact list, audio and video conversations, online meetings, desktop sharing, and more.) meeting or conference call. Turning recording on or off affects everyone in your organization. Recording is on by default.
Mobile access
Manage how users use email and IM on their phones: As admin, you can manage mobile phone and tablet access options for your organization.
Office 365 Community participation
Manage participation in the Office 365 Community: As admin, you can decide whether people in your organization can use their Office 365 user ID to participate in the Office 365 community. Community participation is turned on by default, so you don’t need to do anything unless you want to prevent people from using their Office 365 user ID to post the community.
Top of Page
