Announcing Office 365 for IT Pros (2023 Edition)

Ninth Release in the Series Going Back to 2015

The Office 365 for IT Pros eBook team are proud to announce the release of the ninth (2023) edition of the book. The book files are now available from Gumroad.com. We have sent email to subscribers to the 2022 edition containing a discount code to allow them to continue their subscription for the 2023 edition.

Like every year, we take a couple of months to do an end-to-end technical refresh to create a new edition. Vasil Michev reviews every chapter for technical accuracy. The chapter authors look for opportunities to remove obsolete or duplicate material while they’re busily inserting new content. We also restructured the chapters to make the book flow better.

Apart from Ståle Hansen, all the authors from the 2022 edition return for the 2023 edition. Ståle is now too busy running his successful CloudWay consulting company, and we’re glad that Ståle nominated Ben Lee to take his place. Our other contributors (Paul Robichaux, Brian Desmond, Gareth Gudger, Juan Carlos Martinez, and Christina Wheeler) did a great job of driving me to drink in the ongoing struggle between authors and editor as we brought the book together. I think you’ll like the results.

The 2023 edition marks the 85^th monthly update since we started the Office 365 for IT Pros project in 2014 (the first edition appeared at the Microsoft Ignite Conference in Chicago in May 2015 in both print and electronic formats). We update monthly because it’s the only way to keep current with developments across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. The number of updates made in a year is around 350 chapter changes, but we think that a monthly update cycle creates a living and unique book.

Updating Azure AD PowerShell

In this edition, we took the decision to upgrade every PowerShell example based on the MSOL and Azure AD modules to use the Microsoft Graph SDK for PowerShell or Microsoft Graph API requests. Microsoft plans to deprecate the Azure AD Graph and PowerShell modules sometime soon, possibly in early 2023, and it didn’t seem to make much sense to keep using examples based on old and soon-to-be-obsolete code. We’re down to ten or so mentions of Azure AD cmdlets in the book, eight of which are in the section explaining how guest users can update their account photos in host tenants, something that can’t be done with Graph SDK cmdlets. But we shall monitor the development of the SDK cmdlets and you never know, we might be able to remove those lingering remnants soon.

Foreword by the Father of PowerShell

The foreword for the 2023 edition is by Jeffry Snover. He’s renowned as the father of PowerShell, but that only scratches the surface of what Jeffrey accomplished at Microsoft. His work on the Microsoft 365 substrate is foundational to the search, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and other services running inside Microsoft 365 today. And best of all, he’s a great guy. His foreword is worth reading even if you’re not interested in Office 365 for IT Pros.

The Book Structure

We’ve divided Office 365 for IT Pros (2023 edition) into seven parts and moved some of the tables where we capture data like the Office 365 SLA over time into an appendix. Each part of the book is almost like a standalone book. For now, here’s the structure we use (the book’s table of contents is at the end of this post).

Part 1: The Basics

Chapter 1: Overview

Chapter 2: Embracing the Cloud

Chapter 3: Managing Identities (Azure AD)

Chapter 4: Managing Your Tenant

Chapter 5: Managing Users

Part 2: The Workloads

Chapter 6: Managing Exchange Online

Chapter 7: Managing Mail Flow

Chapter 8: Managing SharePoint Online

Chapter 9: Managing Tasks

Chapter 10: Managing Videos

Part 3: Groups and Teams

Chapter 11: Managing Microsoft 365 Groups

Chapter 12: Teams Architecture

Chapter 13: Managing Teams

Chapter 14: Managing Teams Calling and Devices (Teams Voice)

Part 4: Clients and Devices

Chapter 15: Managing Clients

Chapter 16: Managing Devices with Intune

Part 5: Data Governance

Chapter 17: Managing Microsoft 365 Compliance

Chapter 18: Managing eDiscovery

Chapter 19: Managing Data Loss Prevention

Chapter 20: Managing Information Protection

Chapter 21: Managing Reporting and Auditing

Part 6: Extensibility and Automation

Chapter 22: Power Platform

Chapter 23: Managing Your Tenant with PowerShell and the Graph

Part 7: Sponsor Chapter

Appendix

Companion Volume

We’ve created another companion volume for this edition. Much of the information in the companion volume is now very old, but we are told that people like to have it, so it’s there. We have moved the old Stream (classic) content from the main book to the companion volume.

Thanks Quest!

We’d like to thank our sponsor, Quest Software, for their ongoing support. We could not undertake the amount of effort necessary to build and maintain a 1,301 page, 660,000-word book without their help. Quest run a terrific in-person event called The Experts Conference. The next event is in Atlanta on September 20-21. We’d love to meet with Office 365 for IT Pros readers there.

Table of Contents for Office 365 for IT Pros (2023 Edition)