Part of the MVP thing is the bag of \u201cgoodies\u201d we receive from Microsoft as part of our award.\u00a0 There\u2019s a nice plaque and glass statue thingie as well as the requisite logo\u2019d handout stuff (hoodie, water bottle, that sort of thing).\u00a0 But one of the nicest gifts is a freebie subscription to O365.<\/p>\n
I got my subscription today so I thought I\u2019d go ahead and set it up.\u00a0 I decided I wanted to register \u201cbeagledom.ca\u201d as my domain as I use beagledom in my home IT lab so I went on to GoDaddy\u2019s Canadian website and looked up availability.\u00a0 Domain was available so I filled in the web forms, handed over my 20 bucks (Canadian) and registered the domain for 2 years.\u00a0 All told it took about 3 minutes start to finish.\u00a0 Painless, really.<\/p>\n
I then registered on Office365 for \u201cbeagledom.onmicrosoft.com\u201d which registered cleanly (remember you have to start with onmicrosoft.com, first).\u00a0 I then clicked on \u201cAdd Domain\u201d in the Admin portal and filled in \u201cbeagledom.ca\u201d as the domain.\u00a0 O365 comes back with wording to the effect of, \u201cOh, you use GoDaddy, would you like us to confirm domain ownership through GoDaddy?\u201d.\u00a0 I click OK, things whir for a bit and then O365 comes back and says everything is confirmed and my domain is set in O365.\u00a0 I then follow the normal 5 steps to go \u201clive\u201d with beagledom.ca in preference over beagledom.onmicrosoft.ca.\u00a0 Step number 3 is the DNS portion which normally requires a bunch of manual DNS entries needing to be made.\u00a0 However, in this case, O365 comes back with the, \u201cOh, you use GoDaddy, would you like us to set up DNS?\u201d.\u00a0 Again I click OK, system whirs for a sec and then O365 says it\u2019s all done, DNS is configured.\u00a0 I complete the last two steps and, voila!, I am fully live in O365 as beagledom.ca.<\/p>\n
My last step is to set the default email address on my own account so that I can start emailing and that is the end of my configuration.\u00a0 Including the time it took me to buy the domain through GoDaddy, my total time investment to bring up my O365 tenancy was literally about 15 minutes, start to finish!\u00a0 And the process was painless<\/em>.<\/p>\n Now, I realize my setup is not the equivalent of getting things set up for 100\u2019s (or thousands) of users, but it certainly speaks to how easy Microsoft and GoDaddy have made the whole onboarding process, specially so for small concerns.\u00a0 And, honestly, the process would be just as simple for those of you who are technically challenged.\u00a0 GoDaddy even has tools to onboard you on to O365 and O365 has a tool to allow you to do the whole domain purchase process through GoDaddy right from the Admin portal in O365.\u00a0 It could not be any easier.<\/p>\n I cannot get over how easy it was.\u00a0 If you have the flexibility to go down this route for O365 set up then I\u2019d urge you to do so.\u00a0 Talk about a stress remover!<\/p>\n Bravo Microsoft and GoDaddy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"