So how do you monitor all the changes in Office 365? How do you troubleshoot something if you have something to fix? Any yes, also in the cloud there are things you might have to fix. Let’s go and take a look at it.
I don’t think I have to start all over again and explain what Office 365 is, why Microsoft has chosen the “mobile first cloud first” strategy and all that stuff. If you want to learn more about the services within Office 365 you should check out my Mastering common challenges with Office 365 series.
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In this short article I will help you to figure out the most important tools and pages I am using for monitoring and troubleshooting Office 365.
First, the very good Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer. This is either a website or the tool you can download which helps you not only with issues in your Office 365 environment, it helps you way beyond that.
If you open the link above you find the tab Office 365 and several things you can check on as shown in the picture below.
You find first the Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant for Office 365 which helps you directly on your client. You download the tool, you run it (similar Click-to-Run experience installation like Office 365 ProPlus) and you get a bunch of options you can test. It is pretty easy to use, but also very good in my opinion.
Next is your option for Office 365 General Tests which are about Exchange DNS, Lync DNS and SSO. After that we have the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync Connectivity Tests. Pretty obvious what that test is doing, right?
As your fourth option there are Microsoft Exchange Web Services Connectivity Tests and of course you need to check Outlook at some point, you find your Microsoft Office Outlook Connectivity Tests.
The last two tests are Internet Email Tests as well as Free/Busy Test. A lot of testing you can do there 🙂
There is also the Message Analyzer Tab where you can check you e.g. undeliverable mails you’ve received and even more.
In total, a very solid and very useful tool also get information about how things work. You get very detailed information and can check on the specific parts you need. Definitely worth to check on it.
The admin center
Next up is the Health section in the admin portal. THE monitoring in Office 365. 😉
The first one there is the “Service health” where you can see how your services are doing. Treat them well and check on them once in a while. They treat you well most of the time. 😉
You can monitor the different services e.g. Exchange or SharePoint if there is something to do for you. Next is the Message center which received a bigger update a while ago. It shows now the major updates coming soon.
You have also the possibility to choose what you want to see and who should get notified.
A really cool update for the admin center from my point of view.
Last but definitely not least is the Security and Compliance center. Maaan, that thing is huge can do a lot and helps you even more with monitoring!
Alright Mary-Kate or Ashley, humongous. This is also the key factor why I created three specific articles about the Security and Compliance center. Go check that out if you are interested. Alerts, content search, eDiscovery, audit log etc. there are many things to discover.
That’s already it for a first quick look into this topic about monitoring and troubleshoot in Office 365. Until the next one, don’t be AFRAIT