{"id":718,"date":"2012-12-21T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-21T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vm-officeblogs.cloudapp.net\/2012\/12\/21\/the-new-sharepoint-online-administration-center-more-customer-control\/"},"modified":"2022-07-25T04:22:46","modified_gmt":"2022-07-25T11:22:46","slug":"the-new-sharepoint-online-administration-center-more-customer-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365\/blog\/2012\/12\/21\/the-new-sharepoint-online-administration-center-more-customer-control\/","title":{"rendered":"The new SharePoint Online Administration Center\u2014more customer control"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi, I’m Kate Everitt, a Program Manager in SharePoint Online. I’m going to share insight about how to manage the new SharePoint Online environment while highlighting key features of the new SharePoint Online Administration Center. I’ll then ask Phil Newman, a Program Manager on my team, to discuss how to automate SharePoint Online management tasks using remote Windows PowerShell.<\/p>\n

The SharePoint Online Admin Center is evolving, and in the upcoming release we will introduce significant improvements in management, including configuration of Search, Apps, Project Online (if purchased), IRM, External Sharing, Start a Site, and more. We will touch on a few new scenarios below.<\/p>\n

SharePoint Online Admin is embedded within the Office 365 management capabilities<\/span><\/h2>\n

The SharePoint Online Administration Center, included in the Office 365 Midmarket and Enterprise plans, is one part of the overall administration experience for Office 365, alongside the Exchange Online and Lync Online Administration Centers. You also perform certain tasks, like creating new users and assigning licenses, from within the global level of the Office 365 Administration Center.<\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n

What’s new?<\/h2>\n

The first thing you’ll notice about the new SharePoint Online Administration Center is its new look and feel\u2014consistent across all of Office 365. We’ve also added a navigation bar across the top, which makes SharePoint sites and content more accessible as well as access to the other admin centers you have permissions to.<\/p>\n

\"Access<\/p>\n

Figure 1. Access to various workloads and administration centers<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sharing<\/h2>\n

We’ve added more control over how sites are used and shared. The sharing setting allows administrators to choose whether site collections are for internal access only, or enabled for external sharing\u2014this is called External Access. It is now possible to share individual documents via the new feature referred to as Guest Links, which enable both authenticated and anonymous methods of sharing Office documents. The new sharing features make it easier for teams to work with people and groups outside their company, while site administrators can make sure access to data remains secure.<\/p>\n

\"Three<\/p>\n

Figure 2. Notice the three levels of external sharing: all off, External Access of sites only, and enabled anonymous Guest Links<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Search<\/h2>\n

A series of new search options make an appearance in SharePoint Online for the first time, which previously could be used only from inside the search service in Central Admin. You can manage search schema, dictionaries, and result sources, and remove search results you don’t want. The new features give you control over how search queries act in your SharePoint Online environment and also enable you to import search configurations.<\/p>\n

To read more, see the article What’s new in search in SharePoint Server 2013<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Apps<\/h2>\n

One of the big investments this release is our new Cloud app model. Here, you can set up a corporate catalog to provide internal apps for your company, buy new apps, and manage and monitor how apps are to be consumed by your company and employees.<\/p>\n

Site collection management<\/h2>\n

The easiest way to manage site collections is through the site collections list in the SharePoint Administration Center. This will allow you to create, delete, and manage quota and upgrade for site collections.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Figure 3. The main site collection management page<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

For those customers who have a lot of sites and are looking for a more powerful way to control them, I’m now going to turn this article over to Phil Newman, who will tell you about the new, faster way to handle your SharePoint Online tenancy.<\/p>\n

Introducing the SharePoint Online Management Shell<\/h2>\n

The new SharePoint Online has an all-new Windows PowerShell module for admins to manage their sites and users! Windows PowerShell unlocks a lot of new scenarios, including bulk site creation and upgrade, and better quota management and reporting.<\/p>\n

The basics<\/h3>\n

To get started, download the SharePoint Online Management Shell<\/a>. After you’ve installed the shell, you’re ready to start.<\/p>\n

Given that you are running the SharePoint Online Management Shell on a computer that is not in SharePoint Online, you have to start each session by connecting to your SharePoint Online environment. To do that, use the Connect-SPOService cmdlet.\u00a0 You always connect to the SharePoint Online Administration Center URL.<\/p>\n

To connect, run this script in the SharePoint Online Management Shell:<\/p>\n

Connect-SPOService \u2013url https:\/\/mytenant-admin.sharepoint.com<\/span><\/p>\n

If you want to get fancy, you can also put credentials into the script. Be sure you protect files that have passwords in them.<\/p>\n

$username = ‘admin@contoso.onmicrosoft.com’
\n$password = ‘MyPassword123’
\n$cred = New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -argumentlist
\n$userName, $(convertto-securestring $Password -asplaintext -force)
\nConnect-SPOService \u2013url https:\/\/contoso-admin.sharepoint.com \u2013credential $cred<\/span><\/p>\n

What can you do in Windows PowerShell?<\/h3>\n

We found that most of the activity in the SharePoint Online Administration center was around site management. As a result, we focused the new Windows PowerShell functionality on those scenarios. In Windows PowerShell, you can:<\/p>\n