How hard for a volunteer to admin a small Office365 nonprofit?
September 10, 2021 3:35 AM Subscribe
I am on the board for a small nonprofit that is looking to move beyond email collaboration. We have a nonprofit license for Office365, but we are have heard complaints about how complicated it is to administer Office365. In the context of a 10-20 person volunteer "staff", what is the actual difficulty level in configuring the system and managing users?
We are looking primarily at using Teams and the Office suite tools (Excel, PowerPoint) for internal collaboration and file sharing. Medium priority tools would be setting up user email accounts for our domain (and being able to forward those messages automatically to the volunteer's day-job address). Another medium priority is setting up a public phone number that rings to our voicemail, to replace our current phone line. We are not looking at creating an intranet or in running a publicly facing website at this time.
Our volunteer staff have basic to intermediate "office worker" computer proficiency but we can't assume any level of computer administrator skill. If we can follow clearly documented procedures, we are good. If we need to expect that there will be weird issues that require troubleshooting or adjusting settings that are not immediately obvious, that could be a dealbreaker for us.
Our other leading contender at this point is adding Slack to our current Google Suite setup, but we like how integrated Microsoft is and most of our volunteers are far more proficient with advanced features in PowerPoint and Excel than they are in the Google versions of the products.
We are looking primarily at using Teams and the Office suite tools (Excel, PowerPoint) for internal collaboration and file sharing. Medium priority tools would be setting up user email accounts for our domain (and being able to forward those messages automatically to the volunteer's day-job address). Another medium priority is setting up a public phone number that rings to our voicemail, to replace our current phone line. We are not looking at creating an intranet or in running a publicly facing website at this time.
Our volunteer staff have basic to intermediate "office worker" computer proficiency but we can't assume any level of computer administrator skill. If we can follow clearly documented procedures, we are good. If we need to expect that there will be weird issues that require troubleshooting or adjusting settings that are not immediately obvious, that could be a dealbreaker for us.
Our other leading contender at this point is adding Slack to our current Google Suite setup, but we like how integrated Microsoft is and most of our volunteers are far more proficient with advanced features in PowerPoint and Excel than they are in the Google versions of the products.
I think this also depends on the level of resilience you have. In my very small not-for-profit, I'm currently the only person with any IT competence and I can't bank on that to changing, and so questions like this come down to what I feel comfortable doing from now until the end of time. Given AzraelBrown's insight, it might be worth the relevant people just googling how to do a few basic set up things and seeing if the answer looks basically fine, or much too daunting.
posted by plonkee at 7:25 AM on September 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by plonkee at 7:25 AM on September 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
If you're a Facebook user, I'd suggest posting this question in the Nonprofit Happy Hour group, as well as searching for past posts on the topic. It's a very active group and you should get responses from folks who have gone down a similar path (or chosen another strategy).
posted by Sweetie Darling at 7:55 AM on September 10, 2021
posted by Sweetie Darling at 7:55 AM on September 10, 2021
I did this, in the end we got a consultant to do it on an hourly basis. Why it didn't end up working out:
1. Turn over - it was a hassle to deal with adding/subtracting accounts and associated training.
2. Dealing with people's unique technical issues. Most people aren't as tech-savvy as you think.
3. Security. Security was a BIG issue. We had to brick one computer due to a significant (and highly avoidable) security breach, and had regular issues around security. Again, people are not as tech-savvy as you think.
posted by Toddles at 11:05 AM on September 10, 2021
1. Turn over - it was a hassle to deal with adding/subtracting accounts and associated training.
2. Dealing with people's unique technical issues. Most people aren't as tech-savvy as you think.
3. Security. Security was a BIG issue. We had to brick one computer due to a significant (and highly avoidable) security breach, and had regular issues around security. Again, people are not as tech-savvy as you think.
posted by Toddles at 11:05 AM on September 10, 2021
Microsoft updates the various pieces and parts of its cloud platform like DAILY so whoever does this work must stay current and not freak out at the pace of change. I mean, literally, every day there are updates and new features etc. so it's not at all a "learn it and you're done" sort of thing.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 11:32 AM on September 10, 2021
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 11:32 AM on September 10, 2021
O365 sends out a lot of 'major change notices' that are absolutely not major changes. It's just CYA.
For simple applications in which you're using Office apps + Teams out of the box, I think the administrative overhead should be pretty low. Accounts that have an exchange license get email via standard account creation. Setting up email forwarding is not difficult. The voicemail setup might require hiring someone for an hour or two, if setting up the required mail connector to EOP looks too confusing. (And here's the article on setting up an autoattendant -- voice menu system -- just in case).
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:24 PM on September 11, 2021
For simple applications in which you're using Office apps + Teams out of the box, I think the administrative overhead should be pretty low. Accounts that have an exchange license get email via standard account creation. Setting up email forwarding is not difficult. The voicemail setup might require hiring someone for an hour or two, if setting up the required mail connector to EOP looks too confusing. (And here's the article on setting up an autoattendant -- voice menu system -- just in case).
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:24 PM on September 11, 2021
This thread is closed to new comments.
Admittedly, we're a technology company so techy overall, and we moved to Office365 two years ago. I would call O365 administration "things aren't in the obvious place". Email admin sometimes happens in the O365 admin, sometimes in the Exchange admin. We were just forced to move to Teams from Skype and I don't have any idea how it works but we haven't had to change anything in it. Any time I need to set something up I'm googling things. The few times recently I have gone in there to change something it turns out the setting was on the user's end and not something I could change within O365.
But -- generally, in O365, once I set something up, it just works. I am almost never actively using the O365 admin.
So, I predict your experience is going to be "Googling a lot of basic setup things" and then "not touching Office365 until you have a user join or leave".
When we switched to O365, we actually paid a local tech company to do the switchover for us, and when we've had questions/problems they've helped us, billed hourly; in the 'getting going' stages you may want to look into this service near you.
posted by AzraelBrown at 6:02 AM on September 10, 2021 [1 favorite]