Create a Microsoft 365 Tenant

0:01In many parts of the world, there are these little,

0:04I guess, dolls that are quite popular

0:06in certain cultures and countries.

0:08So for example, in Japan, in China, Russia, Ukraine, Poland,

0:13they have these dolls that are very much like these.

0:16Now, this is just an AI-generated one,

0:18and I had it cut out the middle

0:19so you could kind of see that they're hollow in the middle.

0:22And of course, as you can guess,

0:24one of these dolls could fit inside of the other,

0:26which could fit inside of the other,

0:28which could fit inside of the other.

0:30Kind of looks like I'm part of this, but anyway.

0:33The reason why I bring up these Russia nesting dolls,

0:36as they're very frequently called,

0:38is because it kind of resembles

0:41the Microsoft Cloud Platform.

0:43You see, there are many interconnecting parts

0:46that kind of fit inside of one another

0:49or overlap one another

0:51that comprise the whole Microsoft Cloud Platform.

0:55Let's take a look at some of these constituent parts.

0:58One of those would be Azure itself.

1:01So it's kind of funny because the word Azure

1:04does not even appear in the MS-102 exam objectives,

1:09but we cannot escape it.

1:10You cannot do MS-102 without having Azure.

1:14You have to have it.

1:16It's an overarching umbrella

1:18that kind of encompasses everything else

1:20below those bullet points, okay?

1:23Everything else that we're gonna be getting to.

1:26For example, Azure hosts Entra ID,

1:29which we'll talk about next.

1:31Basically, Azure is Microsoft's Cloud Platform

1:35that is known as infrastructure.

1:37Oops, my pen's working weird.

1:39Infrastructure as a service,

1:41which is where you can have a variety

1:43of different infrastructure elements

1:46that we might normally have on-premises,

1:49but now they're in the cloud.

1:50So you can put your DNS, for example, in Azure.

1:53You can put networks in Azure, many other things.

1:56There's also the platform as a service.

1:59So you can have this interoperate with other things

2:02such as Kubernetes and other platforms

2:06where you're developing products or software

2:08or something like this.

2:10There's also Entra ID.

2:12In a lot of ways, Entra ID is really kind of the crux

2:16of Microsoft's cloud because it's so critical

2:20that you have a reliable and authenticatable,

2:24if I can say that word, identity provider.

2:26That's how we get authenticated.

2:29That's how your users will be able to gain access

2:32to anything in, well, basically anything on this whole slide.

2:36Entra ID basically supports Azure and Microsoft 365,

2:41which I just abbreviate as M365, okay?

2:44So Azure would be your big umbrella,

2:46and within that, you would have Entra ID,

2:50which would be our users, our groups, and so forth, okay?

2:55And then beyond that, we have Microsoft 365 or M365,

3:00and this will be backed by Entra ID.

3:02So Microsoft 365 is kind of a,

3:05I guess, another umbrella under here.

3:08And within that, we would have things

3:10that would be considered software as a service.

3:13So Exchange Online, SharePoint, OneDrive,

3:18which in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem

3:21is actually kind of one and the same, okay?

3:24Your users will have it surfaced as OneDrive,

3:28but in reality, especially when they're doing things

3:30like sharing documents in Teams or something like that,

3:33it's actually under the surface,

3:35it's actually SharePoint, okay?

3:37So SharePoint slash OneDrive,

3:40Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 apps,

3:43Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Teams,

3:48all of the rest of that

3:49would be part of the Microsoft 365 umbrella.

3:53Now, the thing is,

3:55when you create a Microsoft 365 tenant,

3:59which is one of the things we'll be doing,

4:00actually probably do that in the next video,

4:02when you create that tenant,

4:04and that is one of the exam objectives for the MS-102,

4:08what it actually does

4:09is it also will automatically create an Azure tenant,

4:13and once you have an Azure tenant,

4:15it's also going to house within side of that

4:17or host Entra ID.

4:19So creating this creates in turn

4:23these other things as well.

4:25So you don't have to create them separately.

4:26Now, to be fair, I've really only created Azure tenants,

4:30which is also a way of creating both Entra ID

4:34and a Microsoft 365 tenant.

4:37That's how I usually do it.

4:39But since we're in the MS-102

4:41and the emphasis is on Microsoft 365,

4:44we'll do it that way.

4:45Instead, we'll create in the next video

4:47a Microsoft 365 tenant.

0:00All right, now I want to point something out here,

0:03and that has to do with kind of what your objective

0:05or your background is with Microsoft 365.

0:09And that has to do with creating a tenant

0:11in the first place.

0:13Now, many of you probably already work for corporations

0:16where you have one or more tenants already in place.

0:20You probably didn't create them.

0:21They might've been there for years.

0:23In fact, Azure has been around,

0:25I think this is the 15th anniversary

0:27at the time of this recording here in March of 2026.

0:31It's been around for at least 15 years

0:33at the time of this recording.

0:34So you're very likely to have inherited something there,

0:37but you may also be someone

0:39who needs to create another tenant.

0:41Maybe you have a branch that has, or a subsidiary

0:44that needs to have its own management

0:46and its own M365 and its own Azure and all that stuff.

0:50Or you might just be a student.

0:52You might not have created any of that yet.

0:54You might not have worked

0:55in any of these environments quite yet.

0:57So you need to put hands on this stuff

0:59in order to really learn it.

1:00I'm telling you right now,

1:02you're gonna have to click through this stuff

1:03and navigate your way around.

1:05And by the way, in total,

1:08there are many hundreds of these different blades

1:12over here on the left and sub blades

1:15that break out into additional blades

1:18and all of this kind of stuff.

1:19We're not gonna investigate all of that right now.

1:22But these over on the left,

1:23anything on the left is usually called a blade.

1:26Anything within this section over here

1:30where there are options up at the top,

1:32those are normally called tabs.

1:34Even though they don't really look like tabs to me,

1:36that's what they call them.

1:37Now, what I'm showing you here

1:39is a pre-existing M365 tenant, okay?

1:45And it also has an associated Entra ID tenant

1:48and an Azure tenant.

1:50Really, I don't think Entra ID

1:52is a tenant on its own.

1:54It's contained within, though, an Azure tenant.

1:57Okay, so that having been said,

1:59the reason why I'm bringing that up is because, again,

2:01if you're from a corporation or something like that,

2:03or you need to create an additional M365 tenant

2:06slash Azure tenant, well, how do you do that?

2:09And how do you keep it all straight, so to speak?

2:12That can be a real point of confusion.

2:14And I'll admit, I've been confused myself in the past there

2:17because you can use a single account

2:20to create multiple tenants, all right?

2:23So if I'm using a personal account,

2:26which Microsoft calls an MSA account,

2:29I don't know where the S comes from,

2:30Microsoft, I guess, the S in Microsoft.

2:34So MS and then A is the account,

2:37and that could be just a personal account.

2:39And you might have one of those created at your company

2:42just for sake of being kind of a central junction

2:46for all of your tenants that you would then create.

2:50This could be an Outlook.com, Outlook,

2:53you know, what am I trying to say?

2:54Hotmail, Gmail, probably most of us are using Gmail

2:57or something like that, or a live account, okay?

3:00So it can also be just a personal Microsoft account

3:03that you create, even Yahoo or maybe an AOL account.

3:08Are those still around, I guess?

3:09Anyway, if you're someone like me

3:12or someone who's a student

3:15and you're learning all of this stuff,

3:17I've created multiple tenants in the past

3:20and you can do it with a single email account.

3:22So if we take a look at my little icon up here in,

3:27what am I in?

3:28Chrome, I'm in Google Chrome,

3:30but it doesn't really matter the browser.

3:31You can see I'm logged in here as jamescbta.gmail.com.

3:36And this is a tenant that I created

3:38for the last Quartus I taught,

3:40which I guess was the AZ800.

3:42And I've also used it for the, I think the AB900.

3:45So I've used it a lot of different places.

3:47It's already got users here.

3:49If I look at my active users,

3:50you can see a list of users that I've used

3:52at various points in the past.

3:54We've got some subscriptions already active,

3:56stuff like that.

3:57But in my objective,

3:59what I need to do is to create a new tenant

4:01so I can show you how that's all done.

4:03So I just went into incognito mode, okay?

4:07And for that, I'm just going to go to signup.microsoft.com

4:11and press enter.

4:12And this is where we get started.

4:14You do want to make sure that you go over here.

4:16We're not going to do this for personal use.

4:18It would give us very limited resources

4:20and does not mirror what we need to know for the MS102.

4:24What we'll do instead is to go to for work or school.

4:27And in particular, we're going to sign up for Microsoft 365.

4:31And again, it kind of doesn't matter which one you choose.

4:33You could choose that or you could choose Azure.

4:35That's the one I've usually done in the past,

4:37but one will create the other plus enter ID.

4:41As I mentioned previously,

4:42I'm going to sign up for Microsoft 365 here.

4:45And then once we do that, we see a few different options

4:48for individuals, which we don't want,

4:50for business, which we do want,

4:52that's the one we're going to be selecting.

4:54There's also for enterprise,

4:56we probably kind of sort of could do that one as well.

4:59In fact, actually we could,

5:01because they both go to the same creative path,

5:04a creation path.

5:05It takes us to the same route to create the tenant.

5:08And then there's this one for education,

5:10which is very, very similar to these other two.

5:12It's just that it's for educational institutions.

5:15So if you're in an educational institution,

5:17like a university, something like that,

5:19someone probably went to this for education one.

5:22The significance of that though,

5:23is the trials are different.

5:25So for education, they have different licensing products

5:30that you would use to assign to your users

5:33and stuff like that.

5:34They have a little bit different pricing,

5:36but the functionality is mostly the same, okay?

5:40So if you're in an educational environment,

5:41just about everything I show you here

5:43will still be effective for you as well,

5:45but I'm going to go to for business.

5:47Of course, Microsoft wants me to use browser,

5:50the Edge browser, as you can see up at the top,

5:53I'm going to say no thanks.

5:54And I'm also going to go up here to the top

5:57where it says try for free.

5:59And again, if you're a student

6:01or if you're in an existing enterprise

6:04and you want to have a tenant

6:06that you can kind of play around with, so to speak,

6:08without affecting your production,

6:10that's what you want to do.

6:12I strongly recommend, I think for obvious reasons,

6:14that you don't fiddle around

6:16with your production environment, okay?

6:19Because you don't want to mess something up here.

6:21So I'll try for free.

6:23Again, I'll click try for free.

6:25There's also a version without teams.

6:28I'm not going to get into a lot of detail with that,

6:30but the reason why there's one without teams,

6:32and I don't have all the data on this, the legal data,

6:35but in the European Union,

6:38they kind of objected to the fact

6:40that Microsoft would have you sign up for all of this

6:42and automatically package together with it, Microsoft Teams.

6:46So over there, you can do it without Teams.

6:50And then if you want Teams, you have to pay extra for it.

6:53It has to be licensed separately.

6:55So I guess that's the silver lining for Microsoft.

6:58They get more licensing fees.

7:00Anyway, I'm going to try for free over here on the left.

7:03In recent, I guess past year or two,

7:06they have now included also this

7:08ask Microsoft thing over here,

7:10which is really kind of a AI driven thing

7:12to guide you through this if you want.

7:14And as we can see here,

7:16again, we get to try this for free for one month.

7:19And I will point out many times you can extend that

7:23for a lot of the licenses that you'll see within this,

7:26once we're done creating everything,

7:28there will be a link that says extend

7:31or word to that effect, extend for one month.

7:33I can't remember how it is, but it's obvious.

7:35And you'll then be able to extend it.

7:37You can choose the length of your subscription.

7:39Usually there is a discount if you do it for a year,

7:42as opposed to monthly.

7:44I'm going to choose one month in my particular case.

7:47And so we'll be billed monthly

7:49after the subscription trial has run out.

7:53Oh, I didn't specify how many people I want.

7:55You can go up to 25 free users.

7:58So I could start with that.

7:59I just have to be very cognizant of this

8:01because if I don't extend my trial,

8:05then after a month, which I think would be April 9th

8:08at the time of this recording,

8:09which I'll be on vacation then.

8:12So we'll have to really remember

8:13to end or extend this trial by April 9th.

8:17Yeah, it says it right down at the bottom, April 9th.

8:20Then I'm going to start getting billed.

8:21Okay, if I have 25 users,

8:24then it's going to bill me $375, okay?

8:28So what I should probably do before April 9th,

8:30maybe April 7th or 8th,

8:32while I'm at Disney World with my family and my grandson,

8:36hopefully between rides, I'll remember to make changes here.

8:40Definitely set up a reminder for yourself.

8:43That is one of the risks,

8:44and I'll probably get into this later too.

8:46But especially if you're a small shop, you're a learner,

8:50you don't really have a corporation

8:52that covers the expenses for you and stuff like that,

8:54you can really get smacked with Microsoft billing.

8:57Sometimes it's quite opaque.

8:59And I would say something

9:02that you have to be very precautious about.

9:04You can set up alerts, budgets, various limiters

9:08to help prevent you from getting charged

9:11way more than you would have expected,

9:13but you do have to keep an eye on it.

9:14Anyway, as we scroll down,

9:16we'll see some more features here.

9:18Business standard trial, we get 25 users, as it says.

9:22We get all the same features as the paid product.

9:24We do have to enter in a credit card for future billing

9:27so that when comes time, April 9th,

9:30or whatever the date is for you,

9:32they will be able to charge you.

9:33But we can get started with all of these kinds of things.

9:36In other words, all of these products

9:38that you would normally expect

9:39to qualify as Microsoft Office, so to speak.

9:43That's not the official term they use anymore.

9:45They don't say Office 365.

9:49It's just Microsoft 365, which includes these products.

9:54So anyway, I'm gonna go up here and click on Next.

9:58I've gotta enter my email in here.

9:59Okay, so that's what I'm using.

10:01And as I hit Next,

10:02it tells me that the verification is complete.

10:05I'll set up my account and enter in all the stuff

10:08you would normally expect to see in such a form.

10:11I won't bore you with all those details.

10:13So once I'm done, I'll click onto the next page.

10:15All right, so I entered in the CBT Nuggets physical address

10:19and some other pertinent information like the phone number.

10:22Then I have to enter in here a password.

10:24Doesn't really tell you what the requirements are,

10:27but I've entered those in there.

10:28It's also going to create this account.

10:31So here's the thing.

10:32So remember what I told you,

10:33I am jamescbt8 at gmail.com,

10:39but that's not the account I use to sign in with, okay?

10:42That's not the account that I use to administer everything

10:46that I'm gonna be showing you in this course.

10:48What's gonna happen instead is they,

10:50Microsoft creates this for me.

10:52It's called just James Conrad app,

10:54and they kind of randomly put, I guess,

10:55in there cbtnuggets713.onmicrosoft.com.

11:00I'm gonna shorten that just because I'm lazy.

11:04It's a little less typing.

11:05And I'm gonna go ahead and save that.

11:06Hopefully it lets me.

11:07That's only gonna be possible

11:08if no one else has already chosen that.

11:10I can't imagine anyone else would,

11:12except for one of my coworkers,

11:13which they haven't apparently.

11:14So I think we're ready to go here.

11:17Click on next.

11:18And then of course I'll enter in my credit card

11:20and all the rest of it.

11:22And once we're done with that, I will click on through,

11:25and then we'll go ahead and check this box right here.

11:27Again, agreeing that they can charge me $375.

11:31Okay, a little pro tip for you here as well.

11:36I have a few different credit cards, probably too many.

11:38And I chose the one with the lowest credit limit

11:42that I just reserved for only things like this.

11:46So I don't get runaway charges of $3,000

11:50or something like that, okay.

11:51I would not recommend using a debit card

11:55that connects to something like

11:56your personal checking account.

11:58Because again, if something got away from you

12:00and it happens, you know, human errors occur,

12:03or we go on vacation to Disney World and we forget,

12:06I wouldn't want those charges to come back and smack you.

12:09Okay, so just be aware of it.

12:11Here it says they're adding products to my account,

12:12and this will take a minute.

12:13So I'll resume recording once that's been completed.

12:16All right, it looks like it's gone ahead and confirmed here.

12:19So I've got an order number.

12:20I'm gonna get an email at that email address

12:23with that order confirmation.

12:25And this is something you're gonna need to do anyway.

12:28You should start using multi-factor authentication.

12:32That gives you an added layer of security

12:33for this new account.

12:35And you don't have to technically use

12:37Microsoft Authenticator, but I use that

12:39even though I've got Google Authenticator

12:41and a couple of others.

12:42I just use the Microsoft Authenticator

12:43just to keep it as consistent as possible

12:47within the Microsoft ecosystem.

12:49So I'll click on Next.

12:50And after I've entered in the password,

12:53I'll go ahead and sign in.

12:54Here's where they want us to use the Authenticator app,

12:57which I have it on my trusty little phone right here.

13:00I'll click on Next, and I'll take off to scan the code.

13:03So let me open up the Authenticator here.

13:05So I've got Microsoft Authenticator open on my phone.

13:09I'll go ahead and click Next.

13:10I'll set up my account in the app and click on Next.

13:13And here's where I'll scan that code.

13:15Scanning it right now on my phone, hit Next.

13:18And then on my phone,

13:19I don't know if you'll be able to see this or not,

13:21but it shows a prompt here

13:23to enter in the same number we see on the screen.

13:24So I'm entering in the number 82.

13:27And yes, in answer to, are you trying to sign in?

13:31Then it provides that email

13:33or that account that I just created.

13:35I'll click on Yes.

13:37And we now see that we are done.

13:39So two-factor authentication,

13:41and in particular using something

13:42like the Microsoft Authenticator,

13:44is a pretty key part of security

13:46to all of Microsoft's ecosystem right now.

13:49So I would get used to that

13:50if you're not used to that quite yet.

13:52Do I wanna stay signed in?

13:53I'm gonna go ahead and say yes,

13:55although it really won't matter

13:57because I'm in an incognito mode right now.

13:59I'll say yes anyway,

14:00because that's what my normal habit will be

14:02when I am on this.

14:04Okay, it's at this point that I can start to create

14:08or use this Microsoft 365 Business Standard trial.

14:12And then here we are, it takes me to this page.

14:14And it gives you a little bit of introductory stuff.

14:16I'm just gonna check everything.

14:18All of those things are important to me.

14:19I'm gonna say I'm new to this

14:21only because I want it to be able to provide

14:24as many prompts that you might also see,

14:27and I'll click on Submit.

14:28All right, in the next video,

14:30I'll show you some essential things

14:31that you can use to help get you started

14:34and to manage billing,

14:36which again, can be something to be very precautious about.

0:00All right, so let's take a look around, shall we?

0:02One of the first things we're going to really need to do

0:04is to make sure we have the licensing that we need.

0:07And for that, I recommend that you go down here

0:09to Billing on the left blade over here,

0:12right where it says Billing,

0:13and then we click there and go to Your Products.

0:16Now you can see here

0:17that I've already got two products for free.

0:20One of those is the Business Standard,

0:22that's just the trial.

0:23And then there's EntraID Free,

0:26that's just part of the package, right?

0:28Now, one thing I'm really missing here

0:30in order to demonstrate

0:32probably all of the things we need to do

0:34would be the Microsoft 365 E5 license.

0:40I say that very distinctly to make it very clear

0:44that you do not want the Microsoft Office 365 E5 license.

0:51That's a different license.

0:53Microsoft has made things very confusing

0:56because, first of all,

0:58they don't even call it Office anymore,

1:00but for the license, they still refer to it as Office.

1:04This is going to be the kind of common products

1:07you're probably used to in the past

1:09that would include PowerPoint, Word, Excel, all that stuff.

1:12However, all those traditional Office,

1:14quote unquote, products,

1:15are included in a Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 license.

1:21I want to go with E5 because it's also going to include

1:24Defender XDR, which we're going to need for this course,

1:28and probably among other things, okay?

1:30Anyway, that's probably the most full-featured package

1:33you can get for our purposes, okay?

1:36So we don't have it.

1:38How do we get it?

1:39We're going to click on Add More Products right here.

1:42Once we click here, I'm going to scroll down,

1:45and we can see this is the E3 license.

1:50And we can see there, right up above my head,

1:53Microsoft 365 E5, Trial Available.

1:58Sometimes that does not appear.

2:01I honestly cannot figure out Microsoft's secret sauce.

2:06You kind of have to go through quite a lot of click-through

2:09in order to get this sometimes.

2:11Sometimes you might just have to go right to

2:14the billing page and just pay for it outright.

2:17But anyway, here it looks like it's going to be available,

2:20so I'm going to click on Details here.

2:21And this is where it looks as if I have to pay

2:26for the whole thing right up from the get.

2:28Okay, I got to choose a month, a year, three years,

2:31monthly, yearly, whatever, how many licenses I want.

2:34And this is going to be more than $60, by the way,

2:39because it's also going to have taxes added onto that.

2:42Oh, actually, it shows us down here.

2:446840 per license per month, okay, if we do it a month.

2:48Anyway, what we also have, though, is this right here,

2:52Microsoft 365 E5 Trial.

2:56Yes, I want Teams,

2:58so I'm not going to choose these options down here.

3:00So I'm going to choose that option right there.

3:02I'm going to get 25 in my free trial,

3:05and I'll just click on Next.

3:07Just in case I'm going to hedge my bets a little bit,

3:09I'm going to set a reminder to cancel this

3:12before I start getting billed for it,

3:14especially for 25 users at more than $60 per license.

3:20I can't do the math.

3:20Let me see what that would add up to.

3:22That's $1,500 in a month, people.

3:27I'll have to make sure my wife increases my allowance

3:29if I'm going to pay for all of that.

3:31So I'm going to just do this by month down here,

3:34and to hedge my bet,

3:36I'm also going to put in probably four licenses.

3:39I could probably get away with that

3:41if I did accidentally get charged.

3:43By the way, I will say this too.

3:45If you contact Microsoft Support,

3:47they're usually pretty good

3:48about refunding accidental charges.

3:51If you do that time and time again,

3:53they might start to look at you sideways,

3:55but I've had a mishap or two,

3:58and they've been pretty gracious about that.

4:00The only other thing I would say about that is

4:02if you're on a trial license, a trial membership,

4:06you're at the bottom of their priorities

4:09for support and everything.

4:11So for example, some things we'll set up,

4:14and you'll see this as we go.

4:15It might take a few hours before they're actually activated,

4:20but if you're a paying customer,

4:22you get more compute resources,

4:24more processing resources from Microsoft

4:27to enable your products,

4:29and so it's going to be a little bit snappier

4:31if you're a paying customer.

4:33Anyway, I'll choose update to the number four licenses,

4:37and if I did have a mishap here, I'd get charged $273.

4:42Actually, I'm going to try to extend it first.

4:44Usually you can, and I think we're ready to go.

4:47This is also one of those places I do recommend

4:49you read all the fine print,

4:51because it will tell you about your billing frequency,

4:54refunds, all that sort of thing,

4:55so I'm going to go ahead and place the order now.

4:57Now, I'm going to go ahead

4:58and assign the licenses a little bit later.

5:02We can cover that separately,

5:03but at least I've got the licenses now,

5:05so I'm going to go ahead and close that

5:07and go back to my products

5:08just to make sure that it shows up.

5:10Sometimes you have to hit refresh.

5:11I do find that with a lot of the UIs here.

5:13Oh, here it did actually show up just fine.

5:15It does say that it's pending.

5:17I'm not sure why that might be

5:18because I haven't assigned it to anybody yet

5:20or it just has to go through Microsoft's process

5:24on the backend, but while we're here,

5:26I will click on that, and I want to show you,

5:29here is where you can extend the trial date.

5:32I have noticed that when you do that,

5:35if you do that too prematurely, like if I do that right now,

5:38for some reason, it still shows me the expiration date

5:41of only 30 days from now.

5:44So I try not to click that just in case

5:48until I'm a lot closer to 4-10-26.

5:52So I might click on that link right there,

5:55maybe on the ninth or the eighth or something.

5:57Now, the next thing I do, you may also prefer this.

6:01A lot of people like this, is to enable dark mode.

6:04This is just blinding to me

6:06to be all brilliant white all the time.

6:09So I'm gonna go to dark mode

6:11and my eyes are already thanking me,

6:14except for this big light I have here to light myself.

6:16And here we go.

6:18We should be in good shape now to proceed with the next video.

0:01All right, so this is where we left off last time.

0:03Remember, the subscriptions,

0:05I don't mean to scare you about Microsoft too much,

0:08but the subscriptions can get away from you.

0:10So I'm gonna show you how to help manage those expenses.

0:13Now, also for an individual learner, like you might be,

0:18or for someone like me, who's a trainer,

0:20who really only works with a few test accounts

0:22here and there and shows people

0:24how to do this kind of thing,

0:26the expenses can be quite high.

0:28However, on a corporate level,

0:31you might, like, I think it was two or three months ago,

0:33I had a 500 and some dollar expense

0:37because I was enabling certain features

0:39that I had to demonstrate for a previous course.

0:42Now, for just me and a few sample accounts,

0:47that was quite expensive.

0:48However, in the corporation,

0:51that would have potentially only been

0:53a 50 cents per user or something, okay?

0:56Depending upon the size of your organization.

0:59So it scales out economically for what you get for it.

1:03But in a smaller basis or a test or trial

1:06or a training basis, that can be a little expensive.

1:09So let's take a look at how to manage those sorts of things.

1:12So here we are down, I'm in the same place,

1:14I'm gonna actually go to the beginning.

1:16So I'm gonna go right to the top here,

1:17Microsoft 365 Admin Center.

1:20And you can see here that the URL

1:22is out admin.cloud.microsoft.

1:25And this is just the homepage for that, okay?

1:27The homepage.

1:28So now we'll go down here to billing over on the left,

1:30the billing blade.

1:32Again, we were just at the products.

1:34This is where we saw that I do have,

1:36let me kill this stuff.

1:37The Microsoft 365 E5 account.

1:40Oh, it says it's active now.

1:41Earlier, it showed that it was pending.

1:44So I guess we're good there.

1:45And then we go down here to billing accounts

1:48over on the left,

1:50and we can see we have this one billing account.

1:53You may have more than one billing account.

1:56And this again can be especially the case

1:58if you have, oh, subsidiaries or different divisions,

2:01or you manage expenses separately between your tenants.

2:06Okay, I'm gonna zoom in a little bit too

2:08so we can see more clearly.

2:10All right, now let's go to controlling these expenses,

2:13which again, you gotta watch out for.

2:15So I'm gonna go to bills and payments.

2:18Right now I can see I have two invoices at $0.

2:21I'm willing to accept it.

2:23But as you can see right now,

2:24these are just my free trials.

2:26I'm pretty sure is what these are.

2:27If you click on one of those,

2:29it can show you a little bit more detail.

2:30But again, there's nothing really to see here right now.

2:33But what we wanna do is to control our expenses.

2:37So I'm gonna go down to cost management down here.

2:40And oh, as soon as I get here,

2:41I realize we have to do something else first, okay?

2:45We don't actually have Azure quite yet.

2:48I mean, we do and we don't.

2:49Let me explain what I mean by that.

2:51Remember I told you earlier that Azure

2:53is kind of created in conjunction

2:56with generating a Microsoft 365 tenant.

3:01The bones are there,

3:03but there's no meat on those bones yet.

3:06So what we'll need to do is to go to Azure.

3:09All right, now the next thing I wanna show you though,

3:11as a quick tangent, is this little icon up here.

3:14Okay, you see that right there?

3:16Normally you will not see that.

3:18I'm running Google Chrome.

3:19And in Google Chrome,

3:20you can get an extension called Centro 365.

3:25This is not a Microsoft product.

3:26It's from Sean O'Sullivan.

3:28He's created this and it's very handy.

3:31Let me show you what I mean.

3:32Remember that icon I was just talking about?

3:34Well, there's a lot of admin consoles

3:37to go through in Microsoft's cloud ecosystem.

3:40And it's kind of hard to always remember which one's which,

3:43and then you gotta bookmark everything and all that stuff.

3:45So what I do here is I just click there.

3:48And that will just take you to all of the major items, okay?

3:51Microsoft 365, which is where we are right now.

3:55There's 365 apps, such as, you know,

3:57the Microsoft quote-unquote office types of apps.

4:01Lighthouse, Azure Portal, Defender XDR,

4:04we'll be getting into that in this course.

4:06Here's Entra ID, which we'll also be getting into.

4:09But what I need to do right now is to go to the Azure Portal.

4:12So I'm gonna go right there.

4:14And again, it's here.

4:16I've logged into it.

4:18You know, I'm gonna not go on a tour right now,

4:20but I just don't have anything to do with it yet, okay?

4:24It's just the framework is here.

4:26So I'm gonna go down here to Start.

4:27And again, we get a free trial.

4:30Fortunately, this does have $200 of free credit

4:33towards Azure products, such as virtual machines.

4:37So I'm gonna click on Start there.

4:39Try Azure for free.

4:41I'm gonna go to my account here.

4:43I've got a couple of different ones that look very similar.

4:45The one we'll be working with in this course

4:47is jamesconrad at cbtnuggets7.onmicrosoft.com.

4:53So I'm gonna agree to the agreements.

4:56I have no idea what I just clicked on, but that's okay.

4:59I can't proceed unless I click on Next

5:01after selecting them.

5:02Verification completes.

5:04And I will click on Next to continue.

5:07I'll go ahead and sign up.

5:09Again, I do have multi-factor authentication in place.

5:12And this is a delightful message.

5:15I am not eligible for an Azure free account.

5:19Why would that be?

5:20Well, very likely it's because, again,

5:23since I'm an educator, I sign up for a lot of free trials

5:26and all that stuff.

5:27I've probably exceeded some threshold, okay?

5:30I've gotten, I can't even count

5:31how many free Azure accounts.

5:33So I'm gonna have to just go with pay as you go pricing.

5:36You though, again, if this is your first time doing this,

5:39or if you haven't done it a lot,

5:40you're probably gonna be fine

5:41with getting the free one, free trial,

5:43as well as the free trial,

5:46as well as the $200 in free services.

5:49I also have to select, by the way,

5:50if I'm gonna pay for it, like I'm gonna have to do,

5:54what kind of support that I want.

5:56And you can kind of look at those on your own

5:58if you want to.

5:59I'm gonna do the no technical support option

6:02because I'm a cheapskate

6:03and I don't wanna pay the $29 a month.

6:06I may regret that.

6:07But anyway, that's what I'm gonna select, sign up for it.

6:10Again, it gives me a warning

6:11about making sure I have two-factor authentication

6:14or multi-factor authentication.

6:16And it's gonna go ahead and confirm and create the account.

6:18Now, one thing I do wish it would tell me

6:20is why specifically I was not eligible for a free account.

6:25I'm gonna continue the sign-in process here.

6:28Kind of hurts my feelings a little bit

6:30that I got rejected, but that's Microsoft.

6:34Okay, so anyway, I'm gonna go ahead and click on start

6:37to navigate the portal.

6:39I don't really need to do all that.

6:40This is all quick start stuff

6:43and gives you kind of some free tutorials

6:45and stuff like that.

6:46I'm just gonna actually get to go home.

6:47Okay, and here we are.

6:49Once again, I can choose dark mode here as well.

6:52You don't do it in the same way though.

6:54You gotta click the little gear icon up here

6:57and then I'll go to appearance and switch to dark mode.

7:02Okay, there we go.

7:02Now, once we're here, now I can go to subscriptions.

7:07Your top row of little icons that you see up here

7:10will look different for you than it will for me

7:12because it usually shows what you've used most frequently.

7:15If you don't see what you need,

7:17almost always I'll just search for it.

7:19So I'll just go to subscriptions like this

7:22and this is where I can start to manage the expenses

7:26and that can be done right here under Azure.

7:28So you can go to cost analysis if you have ongoing charges.

7:32I shouldn't have much if anything yet

7:34because I just created this.

7:35Then I can go to cost alerts.

7:37I definitely recommend you go there.

7:40I'm gonna add an alert for my CBT Nuggets billing account.

7:43I'm selecting that billing account now

7:46and I'm gonna click on add.

7:47I'll select the type of an alert.

7:49You can actually do a couple of different types.

7:51One of those would be just an anomaly.

7:54This is where, I don't know if they use AI

7:55or other kind of metrics to determine this,

7:58but if you get a spike in charges for some unknown reason,

8:02like the last time I got one,

8:03I think I had a couple of virtual machines,

8:06which can be set up to automatically shut down

8:09at certain times.

8:10Again, especially useful if you're doing demos

8:12or training or something like that

8:15because you don't want them running 24 seven

8:16because they'll contribute to your charges.

8:19Well, I accidentally left a couple of those going

8:21and it noticed that I normally don't do that.

8:24So it noticed that I was racking up a little bit of charges.

8:27It was only like a couple of bucks, so it wasn't that bad.

8:30So that's one of the things you can set up.

8:33You can also go to budgets down here

8:36and you might find that this is very useful as well.

8:37So I'll click on add and enter a unique name.

8:41I'll just call this, you know, Budget Buster

8:44and it resets every month.

8:46This will be from March 1st.

8:49And again, it'll reset every month.

8:50For some reason, they give you an expiration.

8:52I would think you might want these to run continually,

8:54but maybe they want you to reevaluate in a couple of years

8:58to see if this is what you still want.

9:00So my budget threshold, I'll put 200 bucks.

9:03Oops, I put 2000.

9:04No wonder I have budget problems.

9:06So I put $200 in there and there's nothing to display yet

9:09because we haven't been charged anything,

9:10but I'll click on next.

9:12And then I enter in alerts.

9:14These are very useful.

9:15So I'll say actual cost.

9:17When the actual cost reaches 50% of my total budget,

9:22so in other words, at $100, it'll send me an alert.

9:25Likewise, I'll say actual cost, I'll even do a 100%.

9:29When it gets to my budget, I put $200,

9:32I'll get another alert.

9:33And then I can say,

9:34I also wanna know when it gets forecasted.

9:36So when I get to, let's say 75% of my forecast,

9:42which would be $150, again, I want to be notified about that

9:46and it will also send an email to me.

9:49By the way, that's another thing I should point out.

9:51You can set up additional emails for it to send to.

9:54So for example, the email that I log on with here,

9:58I hardly ever use it.

9:59So I want it to go to a more production email account

10:03that I monitor regularly.

10:06And then, oh, I click on save and it gave me an error.

10:09Oh, because I didn't put an email address in.

10:11As much as anything, this is actually a UI issue

10:15because it looks like I'm seeing the whole page here,

10:18but I'm really not.

10:20You gotta, Microsoft sometimes has scroll bars

10:23within scroll bars within scroll bars.

10:26And this one's not terrible as bad as some I've seen,

10:29but down below, there's a place for an email, okay?

10:31So I gotta go down here and I should also point this out.

10:34This is beyond our scope for now,

10:35but there's this manage action group.

10:38If you want to get very elaborate with this,

10:40you can have an action group that does other things as well,

10:43such as trigger certain actions or a sequence of actions

10:48that you want to take place, for example.

10:51But anyway, that's all we're gonna do for there.

10:52I'm just gonna enter an email address here.

10:54Once I'm done with that, I think that's it.

10:56I should be able to click on save.

10:57So let me enter that in

10:59and you can enter in more than one if you want to,

11:01which might be a good idea in case someone's on vacation

11:04or taking their grandkids to Disney World.

11:06Okay, that's it, I guess, right?

11:08Yeah, so now we've got it done.

11:11There's all of our stuff that we want to be notified about.

11:14And now there's my budget, okay?

11:16Now I can also go over here.

11:18They're very similar.

11:20So notice there's also cost alerts.

11:23Well, isn't that kind of what this is that I just created?

11:26It's a little bit different.

11:27So cost alerts, if we look at this,

11:30I can click on add right here,

11:32and this will give me an alert type of an anomaly.

11:35There's actually another one here as well,

11:37but it's not part of our subscription.

11:38It's a different type of a subscription

11:40for enterprise agreements.

11:42So ours is an anomaly,

11:43and this would do an anomaly by resource group.

11:46So a resource group, just think of that as a bucket

11:51in which you put all of the resources

11:54that you need for something, right?

11:56So it could be for virtual machines,

11:59a database, storage, networking,

12:04all that kind of stuff, okay?

12:05Anyway, it will notify you if it notices something

12:10that's out of the ordinary for what you normally do.

12:12And it just occurred to me that I got one of these

12:14not too long ago, 16 hours ago, apparently,

12:18because in a previous tenant,

12:19it's a different tenant than the one

12:20we're looking at here for this course,

12:22I had some virtual machines running,

12:25and I guess I forgot to shut one of them down

12:27or something like that.

12:28So that's what it gave me, said an anomaly alert.

12:31An unusual cost increase was detected,

12:33and I thought it was in here.

12:36Oh, there it is, look.

12:37276% increase compared to the expected range.

12:42Well, that's really as severe as it sounds,

12:46because all I did was set up a virtual machine,

12:50and I forgot to shut it down, okay?

12:53Now, you can set up virtual machines.

12:55This is just for another day,

12:56but you can set up virtual machines

12:58to automatically turn off at a certain point in time,

13:01like every night at, I don't know,

13:02midnight or something like that.

13:04And again, that's especially useful for lab machines,

13:07tests, something like that,

13:09something you don't need continuous service from.

13:11Anyway, I should show it down here.

13:13Yeah, and it cost me,

13:14it was this virtual machine right here, VM2,

13:1792% of the total and the cost change percentage there.

13:21So that was kind of nice to have.

13:23Even though it looks a little bit scary right at first,

13:26it wasn't as bad as I thought

13:27once I actually looked at the expense.

13:30It wasn't that big a deal.

13:31So anyway, there it is.

13:33There's all some of the criteria that I would have.

13:35I would start on a certain day.

13:37I can finish it.

13:38It looks like it'll be a year for this particular alert.

13:41Again, I don't know why Microsoft

13:43insists on putting some expiration on these

13:48other than the expectation that businesses change,

13:51the way you do things change.

13:53And so you might need to review this periodically.

13:56Then I'll go ahead and click on Create.

13:58And there we go.

13:59If I click on Refresh, hopefully it comes up.

14:01Oh, I don't have any alerts

14:03because I just got started.

14:04So there's no expenses yet.

14:06So that's why it's not showing me anything.

14:07So anyway, that should get you started.

14:10We now have a tenant.

14:11We've got Azure spun up.

14:13We've got cost management worked out.

14:16We've got cost alerts and budgets going on.

14:20And that is something I would, again,

14:22would recommend you set up right at the get

14:24so that you don't get caught short

14:26on your expectations there and get unexpected charges.

0:00All right, so up above, you saw that we went ahead

0:02and created a tenant.

0:04We created a Microsoft 365 tenant.

0:06It kind of set up the scaffolding for an Azure tenant,

0:09but we still had to also go in there

0:11and kind of configure some basics with it

0:13in order to get it operational.

0:16Now, I do want to point out again,

0:18you could have also created the Azure tenant first,

0:20and it would have then auto-created

0:21the Microsoft 365 tenant, okay?

0:24So there's kind of that interrelation

0:25between the two of them,

0:26and either way you go, we'll create an intra-ID

0:31for you as well, okay?

0:33Now, the other thing I want to point out, though,

0:35just briefly here, is an alternative to that,

0:38and that would be to use Microsoft's

0:40Microsoft 365 Developer Program that you see here,

0:43and which will be linked down below.

0:46So if you have this option, I do recommend it,

0:49because this will give you kind of a pre-packaged,

0:53in-situ environment, a corporate environment.

0:57It's a fictional company,

0:59and it already has emails that have been sent,

1:02Teams chats that have already been started,

1:04conversations that are already there,

1:06user accounts that are already in intra-ID.

1:09All of that stuff is pre-configured for you,

1:13and it gives you the opportunity to work with

1:15kind of a real company, so to speak,

1:18even though it's all fictional.

1:19But the reason why I say real

1:21is because it already has emails and everything,

1:24messages, everything that's already been done,

1:27and it gives you a good environment

1:29in which to test certain security measures,

1:32purview, I don't know, data loss prevention,

1:36some other things.

1:37Some of that's beyond our scope in this course,

1:39but it's still very, very useful.

1:41So we used to use it here at CBT Nuggets.

1:43We can't use it for various reasons now,

1:45but I do want to recommend it to you

1:47so that you can take advantage of it.

1:49And this is really what it's about down here,

1:51the Microsoft 365 E5 developer subscription.

1:55That's the one that you can use,

1:58and it does, by the way,

1:59include free subscriptions to Microsoft 365 E5.

2:04I think purview is in there as well.

2:07Some other, it's really full-featured.

2:09It's got really everything you would need

2:12to test out an environment.

2:14And for that reason, I strongly recommend it.

2:16If you're eligible, there is some stuff

2:18about who can qualify for this,

2:20but it's well worth applying for

2:22and standing up one of these free environments.