Configuring Organizational Settings

Organizational settings, as the name implies, are configuration options that apply to the entire tenant. They are used to enable or disable features at the service or tenant level. In many instances, organizational settings are coarse controls that can be further refined by the configuration settings inside each individual service.

To access the organizational settings, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Microsoft 365 admin center (https://admin.microsoft.com).
2. In the navigation pane, expand Settings and select Org settings.

Figure 1.16 – Org settings in the Microsoft 365 admin center

The Org settings page has three tabs, as shown in Figure 1.16:

• Services
• Security & privacy
• Organizational profile

In the next section, each of these settings will be explained in detail.

Services

The Services tab displays settings available for workloads, services, and features available in the Microsoft 365 tenant. Table 1.2 lists the services that have configurable options in the tenant:

Service	Description
Adoption Score	Manage privacy levels for Adoption Score as well as setting the scope for users to be included or excluded.
Azure Speech Services	Manage whether Azure Speech Services can work using content in your tenant to improve the accuracy of speech services. Disabled by default.
Bookings	Choose whether the Bookings service is available for use in the tenant. If Bookings is enabled, you can also configure specific options, such as whether social sharing options are available or whether Bookings can be used by users outside the organization, as well as restricting the collection of customer data.
Briefing email from Microsoft Viva	Choose whether to allow users to receive the Viva briefing email. By default, the briefing email is enabled. Users can unsubscribe themselves.
Calendar	Choose whether to enable users to share their calendars outside the organization. If sharing is enabled, choose what level of detail is supplied.
Cortana	Choose whether to allow Cortana on devices to connect to data in your Microsoft 365 tenant.
Directory synchronization	Provides a link to download the Azure AD Connect synchronization tool.
Dynamics 365 Applications	Choose whether to allow insights for each user, aggregated insights for other users (non-identifiable), or identifiable insights for other users.
Dynamics 365 Customer Voice	Configure email parameters for collecting survey data from Dynamics 365.
Mail	There are no org-wide settings to manage here; however, there are links to various tools in the Exchange admin center and Microsoft Defender 365 portal for things such as transport rules and anti-malware policies.
Microsoft Azure Information Protection	There are no settings to manage for this feature; it is a link to documentation for configuring Azure Information Protection settings.
Microsoft communication to users	Choose whether to enable Microsoft-generated training and education content delivery to users.
Microsoft Edge product messaging for users	Provides information on configuring the Edge Spotlight experience for end users.
Microsoft Edge site lists	Manage lists of sites and specify which browser experience (Edge or Internet Explorer) users should receive when navigating to those sites.
Microsoft Forms	Manage external sharing settings for Microsoft Forms as well as capturing the names of internal organization users who fill out forms.
Microsoft Graph Data Connect	Choose this to enable Microsoft Graph Data Connect for bulk transfer of data to Azure.
Microsoft Planner	Choose whether Planner users can publish to Outlook or iCal.
Microsoft Search in Bing homepage	Customize the Bing.com search page for organization users.
Microsoft Teams	Choose whether to enable Teams organization-wide. Disabling Teams from this interface will make it unavailable for all users, including users who are already licensed. Also, choose the coarse control for whether guest access is allowed in Teams.
Microsoft To Do	Choose to provide internal users the ability to join and contribute to external task lists and receive push notifications.
Microsoft Viva Insights (formerly MyAnalytics)	Manage which Viva Insights settings users have access to. By default, all options are selected (Viva Insights web experience, Digest email, Insights Outlook add-in and inline suggestions, and Schedule send suggestions).
Microsoft 365 Groups	Configure guest access and ownership settings for Microsoft 365 Groups.
Modern authentication	Provides links to information on configuring modern authentication and viewing basic authentication sign-in reports.
Multi-factor authentication	Provides links to information on configuring and learning about multi-factor authentication.
News	Choose organization and industry settings used to display relevant news information on the Bing home page as well as settings for delivering Microsoft-generated industry news to your organization users.
Office installation options	Choose an update channel for Microsoft 365 apps.
Office on the web	Choose whether to allow users to connect to third-party cloud storage products using Office on the web products.
Office Scripts	Configure Office Scripts settings for Excel on the web.
Reports	Choose how to display users’ personally identifiable information in internal reports and whether to make data available to Microsoft 365 usage analytics.
Search & intelligence usage analytics	Choose whether to allow usage analytics data to be filtered by country, occupation, department, or division.
SharePoint	Choose whether to enable external sharing.
Sway	Choose whether to allow sharing of sways outside the organization as well as what content sources are available (Flickr, Pickit, Wikipedia, and YouTube).
User consent to apps	Choose whether users can provide consent to OAuth 2.0 apps that access organization data.
User owned apps and services	Choose whether to allow users to auto-claim licenses as well as start trials and access the Office Store.
Viva Learning	Choose which content provider data sources to use for Viva Learning. By default, LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, Microsoft 365 Training, and Custom Uploads are enabled. You can also manage the level of diagnostic data sent to Microsoft.
What’s new in Office	Choose whether to display messages to users about new features available. This does not change the availability of the feature—only the display of the notification message.
Whiteboard	Choose whether to allow the Whiteboard app to be used. Additionally, manage the amount of diagnostic data collected.

Table 1.2 – Organizational service settings

You should spend time exploring the options for the services in the Microsoft 365 admin center.

Security & Privacy

The Security & privacy tab houses settings that govern various security controls for the organization. On this page, you’ll find access to the settings listed in Table 1.3:

Setting	Description
Bing data collection	Choose whether to allow Bing to collect organization query data.
Idle session timeout	Configure the idle session timeout period for Office web apps.
Password expiration policy	Choose whether to enable password expiration. Password expiration is disabled by default (and the password policy is governed by the on-premises Active Directory if password hash sync has been configured).
Privacy profile	Configure a URL for the organization’s privacy policy and the organization’s privacy contact. The privacy URL is displayed on the Privacy tab of the Settings & Privacy page in the user account profile and when a sharing request is sent to an external user.
Self-service password reset	Provides a link to the Azure portal to configure self-service password reset.
Sharing	Choose whether to allow users to add guests to the organization.

Table 1.3 – Security & privacy settings

These options can be used to broadly configure security and privacy settings for your organization. As with the settings on the Services tab, these are coarse controls. Fine-grained control is available for some of these items inside their respective admin centers.

Organization Profile

Settings on the Organization profile tab are largely informational or used to manage certain aspects of the user experience. On this tab, you’ll find the settings listed in Table 1.4:

Setting	Description
Custom app launcher tiles	Configure additional tiles to show up on the Microsoft 365 app launcher.
Custom themes	Create and apply themes to the Microsoft 365 portal for end users, including mandating the theme as well as specific organization logos and colors.
Data location	View the regional information where your tenants’ data is stored.
Help desk information	Choose whether to add custom help desk support information for end users to the Office 365 help pane.
Keyboard shortcuts	View the shortcuts available for use in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
Organization information	Update your organization’s name and other contact information.
Release preferences	Choose the release settings for Office 365 features (excluding Microsoft 365 apps). The available options are Standard release for everyone, Targeted release for everyone, and Targeted release for select users. The default setting is Standard release for everyone.
Support integration	Use the settings on this page to configure integration with third-party support tools such as ServiceNow.

Table 1.4 – Organization profile settings

Like the other Org settings tabs, the settings on this page will be used infrequently—typically when just setting up your tenant and customizing the experience. As with the other Organization profile setting areas, you should spend some time in a test environment navigating the tenant to view these settings and updating them to see their effects.