What is Microsoft 365 for Business?
Microsoft 365 Business is a line of subscription services that brings together best-in-class productivity apps with powerful cloud services, device management, and advanced security in one, connected experience.
Microsoft 365 Apps for business includes desktop versions of Office apps: Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote (Plus Access and Publisher for PC only), 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage per user, 1 license for all Office apps on five mobile devices, five tablets, and five PCs or Macs per user, automatic updates.
Microsoft 365 Business offers 4 flavors or editions as follows:
- Microsoft 365 Business Basic
- Microsoft 365 Apps for business
- Microsoft 365 Business Standard and
- Microsoft 365 Business Premium
The Microsoft 365 Apps for business is bundled with desktop versions of Office apps with premium features and without Exchange mail solution.
The rest of the three editions ( Basic, Standard, and Premium ) includes Microsoft 365 applications and Exchange mail solution. The Microsoft 365 Business Basic edition has only web and mobile versions of Office apps, whereas Standard and Premium editions have desktop versions of Office apps too with premium features.
In this blog, we are providing the steps involved in setting up a Microsoft 365 Standard edition trial account with a custom domain for Exchange mail solution. Microsoft offers two choices of Sign up for a Microsoft 365 Business Standard subscription. They are :
- Sign in with Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, or other email accounts
- Add a business domain and create a new business email account
Sign in with Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, or other email accounts – This type of sign up is best for very small businesses who don’t need branded email immediately, or who already use branded email from a different provider and do not intend to switch to use Microsoft Exchange. You’ll use Outlook with your existing email account (be it outlook.com, Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, or other).
Create a new business email account and attach a domain – With this option, an Organization’s administrator will be able to use Microsoft 365 Exchange as the Organization’s professional, branded email provider. All the Organisation users will have a shared domain email address. For example, their username, followed by @example.com.
Administrators and other users sign into Microsoft 365 with this new email address. When the administrator follows this process (add a domain and create new business email accounts), all users will get access to all the features provided in Microsoft 365 Business Standard.
Here we are choosing the second method, and setting up the Microsoft 365 Business standard subscription for a custom domain. Before proceeding with the trial account, the administrator should own a domain and be required to set up records for the domain to use the mail functionality on the domain.
Setting up a 30-day free trial account.
Here we are setting up a 30-day free trial account for Microsoft 365 Business standard subscription. After your 1-month free trial, you will be charged the applicable subscription fee. You may need to put the Credit card details when required. Users can cancel the subscription at any time to stop future charges.
First visit the Microsoft 365 product comparison page, where you can find the comparison chart for each subscription and you can choose the subscription depending on your need. The below screenshot shows this page, and we are choosing the 30 day trial for the Microsoft 365 Business standard subscription ( Shown in the redbox )
URL: https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/microsoft-365/business/compare-all-microsoft-365-business-products#
On clicking the “Try free for one month” link, a new page will open, asking your current official email address. Provide your email address in the box and click Next, as shown in the below image.
If your email address is already associated with Microsoft service, you may choose the link “Create a new account instead” on the page to continue. On the next screen, the administrator should provide the details such as First Name, Last Name, Company name, Business contact no, Number of employee count, Region, etc. Provide those details and click Next.
On the next screen, you will be asked to verify the business contact number by call or text verification method. Choose the text verification, and click “ Send verification code”. Then enter the OTP and click verify.
After successful verification, your page redirects to the next page, where you need to provide the username and domain name. Click save to save your login username. In the next step, provide a password for the login username. This becomes your Microsoft assigned first global administrator account. The below screenshot shows these details, click Next to continue.
Quantity and Payment
Here as an administrator, you should provide the number of licenses ( no of users ) to be added in the trial period. You can add up to 25 users during the trial period, and after that, you can change the number of users as per your requirement.
Here we are using one Microsoft 365 Standard license. And then click the “Payment Method” link to provide the payment details such as credit card number and expiration date etc.
Normally your first month is free. You need to add a payment method because the free trial will be automatically converted to a paid subscription after the trial period. When clicking save, you’ll be taken to the secure website to confirm your identity. To do this, Microsoft will submit a small purchase amount to your bank, but it will not be charged to your account. After a while of processing, your credit card will be added successfully.
On the final “Review and confirm” step, you may be required to verify your product is chosen, the quantity of licenses, your billing address, payment method, and PAN ID ( Providing PAN ID is mandatory for the Microsoft 365 Business account )
Click save to save the above information provided. Thus all the information provided is saved. On the final step, click the “ Start Trial” button to finish the setup.
Finally, you will get the confirmation details as shown below with the username and a confirmation email sent to the registered email in the first step. The below screenshot shows this detail.
Click “Get Started” to begin the next step.
Setting up email with a custom domain
Thus setting up a Microsoft 365 Business Standard account is completed, and our next step is setting up an email with a custom domain. When you click the Get Started button, a new page opens in Microsoft 365 admin center as shown below to set up an email for the custom domain you own.
Click on the box with the label “ Setup email with a custom domain “. This will open a box to choose a domain you already own or buy a new domain from the Microsoft registrar.
Since we already own a custom domain, click on the box which says “Use a domain you already own”. This will open the “setup email” wizard in Microsoft 365 admin center as shown in the below screenshot. Click “Continue” to add your custom domain.
Enter the name of the domain you want to configure the email. The domain you add will appear after the “@” character, at the end of your email address. for example, @ demowebsite.com. The below screenshot shows this detail
Click Continue to the next step,
This will validate your domain with the registrar and ask you to log in to the domain host to verify that you are the owner of the domain. Click Verify to start the verification process. This will open your domain registrar login page. Once you login to the domain registrar, you will be asked to provide the validation code by generating the OTP to the registered email or phone number in your domain registrar. There it will ask you to click the “Connect” button to ensure you are the owner of the particular domain you provided in the last stage.
Setting up a new admin account for the subscription
Now your domain registration is validated and completed. In the next step, you will be asked to provide an administrator email address with the custom domain to setup your exchange email in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Click the “Update and sign out” button to login with your new domain account to continue.
In the next step, Microsoft services will connect your custom domain and will add custom DNS records for the custom domain in your domain registrar on behalf of you.
Click continue to Add the DNS records in your domain registrar control panel. After adding the DNS records in your domain registrar ( after signing into the domain registrar account ), you will get a success message, and your mail setup will be finished. You will get a confirmation as shown below.
Click Done to finish the setup process. Now your Microsoft 365 Business subscription is ready, and you can add the users to Microsoft 365 admin center and start using the Microsoft 365 services.
To be continued in the Part -II blog.
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