Microsoft 365 - Setting up your Account

This article is part two in a three part series on migrating your email hosting to Microsoft 365. The full series includes:

a) Get Verified
b) Set up your account (current)
c) Go Live

Once your account is verified, you will need to set up your new account. The Microsoft admin panel is quite robust and potentially overwhelming! Don't fret! Let's get started!

Logging into Microsoft 365 Admin Center

1) You should have received an email from Microsoft prompting you to sign into the Nonprofit Portal to begin. You can click on that link to begin or go directly to  https://nonprofit.microsoft.com/ and then Sign in to your account. 

2) Once logged in, the next screen should have a number of different options, including "Productivity applications". Click on that. 

3) You then should see a screen that has a button that looks like the following. Read the through the page for useful training information and then click on the button to "Continue to Microsoft 365 admin portal"

Continue to Microsoft 365 admin portal

4) Next, you may end up on a page that has "office.com" in the URL. On the left side, you should see a gray graphic with letter "A" on it. Click on that to enter the admin center. Once you are logged in, you can actually go directly to it with the URL admin.microsoft.com

5) If you are in the correct place, you should see a control panel like the grey panel on the left of the attached screenshot.  At the bottom of the list, you may need to click the ". . . Show all" link. 

Add a Software License to Your Account

6) Click Billing -> Purchase services

7) You will now be presented with the many plans available to you, some of which are free, and some of which cost a small fee per user per month. It is up to you which plan to select. We recommend Microsoft 365 Business Premium as it comes with up to 5 licenses for the Office Suite of applications (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.) in addition to Email hosting. If you only need email hosting with this account, you can choose either Microsoft 365 Business Basic or Office 365 E1. These three are all free plans, and all three offer free email hosting. Once you have decided which plan to use, click "Details", click "Get now", and then follow the remaining prompts to complete this set up.

Add Your Parish's Domain

8) Once the previous step has been completed, return to the gray admin control panel on the left side of the screen and click Setup -> Domains

9) Click "+ Add domain". You'll enter your domain name (myparish.org) and follow the subsequent prompts to verify your access to the domain. This can be done with a TXT DNS record through your registrar account. Here are general instructions for adding a TXT record within GoDaddy: https://www.godaddy.com/help/add-a-txt-record-19232

Set up Your Users

10) After your domain is verified, you'll then click on Users -> Active users

11) For each email account you need to have set up, click "Add User" and follow the prompts to complete the account set up.

After all of your users have been set up, you are ready for the Go Live process. 

See next article in the series on Going Live »