Going beyond Office 365's native admin GUI, 365 Command provides powerful Exchange admin capabilities without the need to run PowerShell. A business that moves its email to a hosted solution such as Office 365 typically hopes to reduce operating and administrative costs, reduce spam, and decrease downtime. Alas, administrators who open up the Web-based GUI for Office 365 discover that several of the commonly needed administration and reporting options for Exchange are not available. In many cases, administrators get around the omissions by running PowerShell scripts against the Exchange APIs — or by hiring consultants to run the PowerShell scripts, which are not exactly easy or intuitive to create for mere mortals. Enter 365 Command, a Microsoft Windows Azure Web application, available for a modest monthly fee, that presents a much more complete GUI for administration of Office 365 Exchange. Companies might use 365 Command to eliminate or reduce the need for consultants, who in turn might use it to do more work in less time with fewer errors. In my testing, 365 Command worked well for administering my small Office 365 Exchange installation. I didn’t encounter any issues that required asking for support, and I managed to make my intended changes without breaking anything for anyone. On the other hand, I more or less knew what I wanted to do. As far as I can tell, 365 Command currently has no competition. 365 Command helps with administrative actions, reporting, and auditing. An example of an administrative action is converting a mailbox from a User type to a Shared type. Why would you want to do that? One reason is that there is (or was) a bug in the conversion software that moves Exchange mailboxes into the Office 365 cloud that makes all mailboxes the User type. When a group uses a mailbox — such as “sales” or “marketing” — one good way to manage the mailbox is to make it shared. This also saves a license. Another reason is that for common aliases, such as “sales,” you may want fine-grained control over who sees what folders that you can’t get from a forwarding rule in a User mailbox or from group membership. To continue with the Shared mailbox example, to make this beneficial, you have to actually assign user permissions. Then the users can add the mailboxes to their inboxes as new folders from the inbox pop-up menu. The ability to easily manage mailbox permissions is especially necessary for shared mailboxes, but it’s also often used for executives’ administrative assistants. Auditing is another good use for 365 Command. In a local Exchange instance, you can do a lot to identify policy violations and restrict certain actions. In Office 365, little of that is exposed. 365 Command can display reports about external forwarding, password violations, and users who have full access and Send As access to other mailboxes. 365 Command also can send you scheduled reports via email. 365 Command is a solid administrative tool for businesses that have Office 365 users, especially if no one on staff is an Exchange administration guru with mad PowerShell skills. You could easily justify its cost in reduced administrative expenses. 365 Command is also a handy time-saver for consultants that administer many Office 365 installations for clients. Pros: Provides administrative capabilities not exposed in Office 365’s Web interface Provides a useful dashboard Creates useful reports Allows for auditing of Exchange Online Allows consultants to switch among client sites with a single sign-on Cons: Not directly supported by Microsoft Requires some level of knowledge from the administrator; not for novices Related content news analysis Apple earnings: About that iPhone 'slump' in China Based on information from Thursday's earnings report, it seems that data pointing to an iPhone slump in China were over-baked. By Jonny Evans May 03, 2024 9 mins iMac iPhone Apple news Microsoft begins to phase out ‘classic’ Teams Microsoft is encouraging Teams customers to move to the new, faster version of the collaboration app; the older version will be switched off next year. By Matthew Finnegan May 03, 2024 3 mins Microsoft Teams Collaboration Software Productivity Software news analysis Apple confirms it will open up the iPad in Europe this fall The latest efforts to comply with Europe’s Digital Markets Act mean developers can offer to side load apps to both iPhones and iPads in the EU. Apple has also taken steps to improve what it offers to smaller and non-commercial developers in the By Jonny Evans May 02, 2024 6 mins iPad Apple Mobile Apps news Udacity offers laid-off US workers free access to its courses for 30 days Sign-ups will be available over the next 30 days By Lucas Mearian May 02, 2024 4 mins Technology Industry IT Jobs IT Skills Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe