Use System Center and Office 365 APIs to build an Admin app for Office 365 | Blogging Thoughts on SharePoint and Office 365

Curtis Sawin demonstrates how to use the Service Communications Office 365 API, which was recently released (Sawin notes the release date as summer, 2014). This demonstration is included in a video tutorial from Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA), which is titled Office 365 Troubleshooting: (01) Troubleshooting the Office 365 Service. The video is available for public viewing on MSDN Channel 9.

Sawin explains this API can be used in lieu of Operations Center to scrape service health data from Office 365 and “take any action you want” from it. Sawin’s present an example of how the API has been implemented in an iOS app running on an iPad. The app has been developed by Microsoft and was just presented at the Partner Advisory Council during the third week of November, in Redmond Washington. The app will be available soon for the public to acquire and use. The app appears to be titled “Office 365 Admin Partner”.

The app is notable, as Sawin notes, it also includes additional Office 365 APIs, “so [Sawin] can take a look at my end users, and I can reset this person’s password, for instance”. To repeat, all of this section of the demonstration is running on an iPad.

The inclusion of “Partner” in the title for this app is not insignificant. Chris Oakman, who is also leading the tutorial with Sawin is, in fact, representing a Partner. He explains how the app can be configured to allow multiple tenants to access similar capabilities. In this case the Partner login will act as an umbrella. Each tenant will have a discreet domain under the partner account, where the same capabilities can be exercised, as required. Oakman lets the audience know the app will be first made available to Windows Phone and iOS devices and, later, for Android. The app also has a web component, which is accessible and fully functional with any browser.

The tutorial also includes a section on troubleshooting common Office 365 licensing issues. Sawin runs down a list of known licensing anomalies with Office Pro Plus. He also demonstrates how to find the information required to determine just what licenses services are available to a specific tenant.