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Zero to Sixty – The M365 Admin Portal, Unzipped
- Jordan Albaladejo
- Jul 23
- 3 min read
There’s a moment every Microsoft 365 admin remembers — that first login to the Admin Portal.
You’ve just been given the keys to the kingdom (or the small kingdom of your client’s SMB tenant), and suddenly you’re staring at admin.microsoft.com, trying to make sense of it all. It looks like the central control panel for everything, but what exactly is under the hood? Where do you go from here?
That moment is exactly why this video exists.
The Backstory
The Zero to Sixty for M365 video series is part of a broader initiative called BlueFolder.ZIP, a side project developed by me — Jordan Albaladejo, the owner-operator of Ingest services — to share compressed defensive insights that help people not just navigate the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, but actually understand it.
It’s not just for MSPs. It’s for anyone who’s ever found themselves administering a tenant and silently thinking:
“Should I know what all these admin centers are?”
The Walkthrough
Episode 1 kicks off where most people start: the Admin Portal. It introduces what’s there, what’s not, and what that means for your day-to-day responsibilities.
Covered in the episode:
Navigating the portal layout and understanding the dashboard
Creating users, assigning licenses, resetting passwords
Using built-in support and Microsoft ticketing
Jumping off to the other crucial admin centers: Entra, Exchange, Defender, and more
What’s not in the Admin Portal?
Conditional Access → That’s Entra
Email Authentication → That’s Exchange
Defender security controls → Different portal
Microsoft Purview → Also elsewhere
In short: the Admin Portal is the lobby, not the whole building.
The Clarity Gap
One of the key motivations for this series was the overwhelming fog that many new (and even seasoned) admins feel.
Microsoft 365 is sprawling. The Admin Portal feels like a front door, but behind it are a dozen other doors with overlapping roles, licensing quirks, and branding confusion.
What we need more of is accessible knowledge. Not the kind buried in documentation, but something a person can watch between tickets and say:
"Ah. That makes sense now."
Bonus Resource Mentioned
Check out M365maps.com — a brilliant visual tool that helps decode Microsoft’s licensing jungle. If you’ve ever tried to explain the difference between Business Premium, E3, and E5, this will save you time (and sanity).
The Real Reason This Exists
It’s a way to share what I wish had existed when I was navigating this space — and what I’ve learned in the industry and through self-guided learning.
A Thought for the Solo Admin
Not everyone watching this video is in a big IT team. Many are solo admins, "accidental techs", or early-career sysadmins figuring it out tenant by tenant.
This video — and the ones that follow — are meant for you.
We’re not selling mastery, just orientation.
What’s Coming in Episode 2?
We dive into Company Branding. It seems cosmetic, but actually supports:
User trust during login
Consistent experience across devices
Visual clarity in Outlook and Teams
Tenant-level polish and professionalism
It’s a low-effort, high-trust move — and often overlooked.
Concluding Thoughts
Microsoft 365 isn’t going away. And neither is the need to understand how to use it confidently and securely.
The Zero to Sixty series is here to cut through the noise — not by making you a security expert overnight, but by giving you a starting line that makes sense.
If you’re sitting in the seat of responsibility for a Microsoft 365 tenant — even if you've been there for a while — this episode is for you.
And if you’ve got feedback, let it fly. This is a series for the community, by someone still very much in it.
Written by Jordan Albaladejo
Owner of Ingest services
Creator of BlueFolder.ZIP
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