You may have noticed the prompts to try out the new Exchange Admin Center when logging into the Exchange Online Portal within Microsoft 365.
In this blog I will be documenting some of the useful additions to the new Exchange Admin Center.
If you have anything further to share, please do leave a comment below
A feature which stood out when accessing the new Exchange Admin Center was the ability to set an out of office for any users within your organisation. I’ll start with documenting where to perform this action. Note that this feature is also available from within the 365 Admin Center. I’ll go into detail on this shortly.
How to set Out of Office for users from the new Exchange Admin Center
- From the new Exchange Admin Center, click Recipients and Mailboxes
2. Click the user
3. Click Manage automatic replies
As mentioned earlier in this post, you can also configure Out Of Office replies for users from within the 365 Admin Center. I’ll go through the process below.
How to set Out Of Office replies from the Microsoft 365 Admin Portal
- Login to portal.office.com
- Click Admin
- Click Users > Active Users
4. Click Mail
5. Click Manage Automatic Replies
Back to the new Exchange Admin Center, I would like to move onto another feature which I found useful. The ability for IT Admins to restore user deleted items from users recoverable deleted items folder.
In case you’re unsure about what a user recoverable items folder is, further details can be located at the following Microsoft url Recoverable Items folder in Exchange Server | Microsoft Docs
How to restore emails from a users recoverable deleted items folder
1. Within the new Exchange Admin Center, click Recipients
2. Click Mailboxes
3. Click the user
4. Click Recover deleted items under More actions
4. The portal is shown below. If the deleted item exists within the users recovered deleted items folder, you will be able to recover the deleted item back to the users mailbox. By default, emails are retained within the recoverable deleted items folder for 14 days, but can be configured to 30 days.
Note: users also have access to their own recoverable items folder and can restore emails as they wish. Users are also able to empty the recoverable deleted items folder and delete the emails permanently, unless you have a legal hold/retention in place.
The new portal available within the Exchange Admin Center offers a few useful options such as searching by time, words, item types and so on.
I find the new Exchange Admin Center is easier to navigate when managing users. Please do comment below and let me know your thoughts on the new Exchange Admin Center.
Another change which I find useful is the Groups menu. Groups are accessible from the classic Exchange Admin Center, by clicking Recipients and then the Groups link. All groups reside here. But, in the new Exchange Admin Center, Microsoft have split the groups menu as shown below.
Moving on, another change introduced by Microsoft is that Mailboxes and Shared Mailboxes are separated in the classic Exchange Admin Center, as shown below.
But, in the new Exchange Admin Center, both mailboxes and shared mailboxes exist in the same menu and can be filtered as required. See below.
If you have not already checked out the new Exchange Admin Center, give it a try and it would be great to know your feedback and any features you like or dislike within the new Exchange Admin Center.
