With the release of the new Office 365, running 2013 product version, the administration portal has changed.

The user interface is now reflecting the Modern UI, formerly called Metro, which is now shared between all Microsoft products (Windows 8, Exchange 2013, SharePoint 2013…).

This new administration interface is more clear and more simple, even if it may be disturbing for current Office 365 administrators for the first times.

The Dashboard

This is the main page reached when log on to the administration portal.

This page is showing all relevant information regarding the health of your Office 365 subscription. This more clear and more simple to know if service issues are occurring; you can also follow your service request more simpler.

Another good thing is the alert system on top of the page to show you what need your attention.

Service Health

Service Requests

Setup

This section will assist you to define what domain to use:

• Default: your Office 365 subscription – ie xxxx.onmicrosoft.com
• Your internet domain(s): the wizard to add your domain has been simplified

Off course you can still use the advanced domain wizard from the Domains section.

Service Settings

From this section you can manage all your Office 365 services (Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, password policy or Right Management; services displayed here depend of your subscription).

Reports

This section is new on Office 365. From there, you will have access to reports usage, mainly mail usage (mail flow, DLP…).

This will be helpful to understand the usage of your subscription.

Reports can be download in an Excel format.

Purchase Service

This section has been improved from previous Office 365.

You will be able to buy additional services (such as Project Online or Visio) or storage from there.

The Top Bar

As for previous Office 365, some links are available on the top bar: as usual direct access to your mailbox or SharePoint sites, but also for administrators to some settings – you can access directly from there to Exchange settings or SharePoint administration portal.

I hope this quick overview of the new Office 365 administration portal will help you to get into it