Cloud-based admin capabilities your IT department will love
Given the current day scenario and the new remote work norm, the role and importance of the IT department has grown exponentially. While IT departments have been innovating and building new, resilient and secure solutions and infrastructures for years, with the change in the new normal working scenario, they are playing a critical role in many ways.
Applying the right technology, ensuring a seamless working structure for teams, and at the same time reducing costs or maintaining costs are a few ways aspects they are juggling. Microsoft 365 has introduced new cloud-based capabilities with their admin center to help manage the applications as a service and manage IT costs. There are three key aspects to these services.
Intelligent Insights:
Now, Microsoft 365 advanced capabilities enables you to get quick answers to frequently asked questions about your Office environment. You can get access into detailed views of devices running Office apps in your environment to understand which versions and which add-ins are running. Admins can also view which servicing channel each device belongs to — Beta Channel, Current Channel, Monthly Enterprise Channel, or Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel. This helps admins to act quickly to manage unsupported versions and add-ins to ensure the environment is secure and compliant. Furthermore, creating reports for these results can be done in an easy and quick step.
In the admin center there is also a detailed dashboard view of all security compliances. You can see the date of the last updates and how many apps are up to date as well. To help manage security updates for Office apps, you can set a goal time and goal percentage to specify when devices should be updated after a security patch is released. It’s also easy to roll back updates for certain users or groups.
Servicing automation with controls:
Microsoft 365 Apps servicing helps you reduce the time spent in manual deployments and accelerate the rollout of the latest features and security patches without adding extra effort and costs. With the streamlined and automated apps, it is easier, faster and more secure.
You can view the Servicing Profile by device and easily pause and resume updates as needed. If users are experiencing issues with an update, the update can be paused until the issue is sorted. Updates can also be easily rolled back to a previous version in the event there are unforeseen issues.
Updates can also be scheduled based on business needs and certain dates or times can be specified when updates should not run, like during holidays or during important meetings. Users can also be given a choice to get auto updates or update apps on their own.
Microsoft 365 Apps Health
Innovations in app health give you insights not just during, but also between deployments. In Microsoft 365 Apps admin center, you can view the overall health of users at a glance. This will help understand what actions to take to increase performance and reliability. You can monitor trends in performance and reliability in your organization and assess how many users are reporting diagnostics to help you discover issues.
The new monthly enterprise channel further helps to modernize servicing of Microsoft 365 apps. All these insights play an integral role in determining an organization’s productivity, security, value and future predictability.
