Get to Know Office 365’s New Settings Page

Within the last few weeks, Microsoft has made some renovations in the settings panel of the Office 365 online portal. This is where individual users can access their accounts, available downloads, and change the appearance online portal pages. In addition to being more aesthetically pleasing, the changes bring in a more personal component to the settings by adding new profile pages.

Office 365 Profile Pages

Profile pages allow users to include their own personal picture, company title, contact information and view the licenses associated with their account, as can be seen below.

You may notice that next to where my profile picture should be there are icons for email and messaging, to the respective service for each within Office 365. When I click the email icon, however, a fresh email is brought up addressed to myself. Why is this? Likely for administrative purposes.

All the information present in this page is meant to keep user information organized on the administrator side of things for each Office 365 account. As such, Administrators have to the option to set whether or not individual users can set their own information. This allows users to be easily located when a change needs to be made to their subscription, whether it be applying a license or upgrading a plan.

Back in the settings page, the notification setting is another welcome addition. This allows users to configure the notifications they receive within the web portal (Desktop notification settings must be configured separately). Whenever one of the user notifications is triggered, it can be viewed in the top right corner of the screen at the bell icon. When clicked, a list of all notifications expands from the right side of the browser window. Step outside for lunch? Catch up on everything you missed with the click of a button!

Other than these changes, the other alterations to the Office 365 settings page is largely cosmetic. Clicking through any of the options will lead to a preexisting page, such as the software tab. So no worries there! Users won’t have to relearn an entire new user interface, but may be a little surprised by the change of scenery. And boy, does it look good!