Understand the Importance of Office 365 PowerShell

With the help of Office 365 admin center, the user will not only manage Office 365 user accounts and licenses, although they can also manage Office 365 server products including Skype for Business Online, MS Exchange and SharePoint Online. But, the user can also manage all elements using Office 365 PowerShell commands. It also takes advantage of a scripting language or command-line for automation, speed, and additional capability. Here, we are going to discuss why users prefer Office 365 PowerShell to manage O365 mailbox. Moreover, the importance of Office 365 PowerShell as described below.

Why You Need to Use Office 365 PowerShell?

There are following ways in which users can use Office 365 PowerShell to manage Office 365 mailboxes. Please have a look:

• Office 365 PowerShell can bring out some additional information that you cannot display with the Office 365 admin center
• Office 365 comes with a feature that you need to configure using Office 365 PowerShell
• It is great to perform the bulk operation and data filtration
• It becomes easy to print or save the complete data
• O365 PowerShell makes it easy to manage across server products

Before you start, understand that O365 PowerShell contains a set of modules for Windows PowerShell, a command-line interface for Windows platforms and services. This environment will create a cmd shell language that can extend with additional modules and provides an easy way to execute simple or complex scripts/ commands. For e.g., after you install O365 PowerShell modules and connect to a valid Office 365 subscription, you can run this script to list all user mailboxes for MS Exchange Online:

Getting a list of mailboxes can be easily done by using Office 365 admin center, but count items in a list of all of the sites and all the web apps cannot be easily done.

Note: Office 365 PowerShell is programmed to augment and enhance the ability to manage Office 365 suite, not able to replace Office 365 admin center. Being an Office 365 administrator, you should be comfortable with using O365 PowerShell because there is a configuration process that can only be accomplished with Office 365 PowerShell scripts. In all such cases, you have must know following points:

• Download & Install Office 365 PowerShell modules (only done this once for an administrator computer).
• Connect to the Office 365 subscription (done for each PowerShell session).
• Gather information necessary to run the proper Office 365 PowerShell commands.
• Finally, you can successfully run Office 365 PowerShell commands.

After knowing all basic skills, do not make a list of mailbox users with Get-Mailbox command and no need to understand how to create a new script like the last one to count all items in a list for all the sites and for all web apps. Microsoft and the community of O365 admins will help you with that as required.

Additional Information about O365 PowerShell

The Office 365 admin center will show some useful information, but that does not mean it exhibits all possible information that MS Office 365 stores on users, mailboxes, licenses, and sites. In fact, Office 365 PowerShell lets you a command shell language so you can manipulate further details.

The Office 365 admin center is considered to provide access to most common administrative tasks that apply to many people. In short, Office 365 admin center was designed to carry out most common management tasks so that the administrator can use this tool. On the other hand, you can control all settings (not available from Skype for Business Online Admin center) from Office 365 PowerShell.

Office 365 admin center is most valuable when you have a separate operation to perform. However, Office 365 PowerShell is great for carrying out batch file operations.

Office 365 admin center offers different ways to filter the complete data quickly and locate a targeted subset of data information. On the other hand, Office 365 PowerShell provides filters to match the specific name.

The Office 365 admin center allows you to view the lists of data. To save the information to a particular file, you must copy & paste it into MS Excel or document. Whereas, Office 365 PowerShell will not only display the lists but save it to a certain file that can be easily imported into Excel sheet.

Wrapping Up

Office 365 is a cloud-based email application, which is used by many business users. At certain times, users need to manage all the elements using Office 365 PowerShell commands. Thus, in this blog, we have covered the importance of Office 365 PowerShell in a proper way. Moreover, we have discussed why users switch to Office 365 PowerShell from the Office 365 admin center.