Overview

As a Helpdesk Administrator, you have the permissions within Office 365 to:

  • Reset passwords
  • Force users to sign out
  • Monitor service requests
  • Monitor service health

To get started, log into admin.microsoft.com with your Office 365 credentials (email address and password).

Please note, users with Helpdesk Administration permissions can only change account settings of regular users.


Reset User Passwords

  1. In the Office 365 Admin portal, click on the Users tab on the left and select Active Users.
  2. Scroll down to the user you wish to edit, or use the search bar in the top right.
  3. Click on the Display Name of the user you wish to edit.
  4. Ensure that the user has no administrative access under the Roles heading and, if so, click on the Reset Password button.
  5. In the Reset Password section, set the options you wish to apply to the reset:
    • Having the "Automatically create a password" tick box turned off allows you to specify what the new password will be, using the Password text box below it.
    • Having the "Automatically create a password" tick box turned on will have the password randomly generated. The generated password will always be in this order - capital consonant, lower-case vowel, lower-case consonant, five numbers.
    • Having the "Require this user to change their password when they first sign in" tick box turned on will mean that the user will get a prompt to set a password of their choosing when next signing in with the new password.
    • Having the "Email the sign-in info to me" tick box turned on allows you to receive the password in an email from Microsoft, using the Email text box below it.
  6. After setting the preferred options, click the Reset Password button at the bottom, and the new details will be displayed on screen.


Force User Sign Out

  1. In the Office 365 Admin portal, click on the Users tab on the left and select Active Users.
  2. Scroll down to the user you wish to edit, or use the search bar in the top right.
  3. Click on the Display Name of the user you wish to edit.
  4. Click the "Sign out of all sessions" button to forcibly sign the user out of any applications or browsers they might be signed into.


Monitor Service Requests

  1. In the Office 365 Admin portal, click on the Support tab on the left and select View Service Requests.
  2. Click on the Title of an active Service Request to open it and view the correspondence/details of that request.
  3. Click on the correspondence itself to expand it out and view further details.


Create New Service Request

  1. In the Office 365 Admin portal, click on the Support tab on the left and select New Service Requests.
  2. In the text field, enter in a brief description of the issue and click the arrow button to the right of the field.

    This will bring up any related Microsoft Knowledge Base articles that may assist.
  3. If there aren't any relevant articles, or if you still need assistance, you can click on the Contact Support button at the bottom of this section.
  4. In the new section that appears, fill in the required fields and then click the Contact Me button at the bottom.
    This will create a new service request, which can be viewed via the steps in the above Monitor Service Requests section of this document.


Monitor Service Health

  1. In the Office 365 Admin portal, click on the Health tab on the left and select Dashboard.

    This will display an overview of the health of your Office 365 tenancy
  2. If there are any advisories, you can click on the advisory to display further information
  3. For further information and historical data, click on the Health tab on the left and select Service Health
  4. You can click on the Title of any Active Issue item to expand further details
  5. You can click on the Issue History tab at the top and then on the Title of any listed issue to expand further details on them