New Features in OfficeExpert 4: Unlocking Data Analytics for Microsoft 365

The latest version of OfficeExpert 4.0 is loaded with great new capabilities to help IT groups manage their Microsoft 365 environment more efficiently and securely distribute access to the data analytics and insights previously hidden behind the scenes. We would like to thank the multiple customers from around the world that provided their feedback and enhancement requests to our product managers. Many of the new 4.0 features were guided by the comments and business requirements of those enterprise organizations.

Three exciting new features include the following:

There is so much valuable information available within OfficeExpert that organizations struggle with how to provide access appropriately outside of the IT group. Many of our customers have been exporting data into spreadsheets just so they could share some of the insights with different business unit leaders. To help simplify this process of extending secure access to specific data segments within OfficeExpert we have implemented a method to partition access for the M365 tenant information.

By selecting a group of available Azure AD attributes to filter the OfficeExpert data and usage metrics by department, organization, geographic location, or otherwise, the IT administrators can effectively control who has viewing rights to filtered segments of data. As you can see in the screen capture below, the interface allows organizations to create tenant partitions and then assign users to groups that have access to view ONLY that specific subset of data.

Chargeback reporting provides a very effective model to promote responsible, fiscal accountability for license management at the department level. In recent years, IT chargeback systems have attracted more interest to fairly distribute costs for IT services.  And with the direct Microsoft 365 license model assigned to individual accounts, it provides a straightforward one-to-one mapping for associated costs that can be billed to each specific business unit monthly.

The new release of OfficeExpert includes a complete set of integrated license management and cost analytics features within the Chargeback Accounting page. Within v4.0 you can easily track exactly what licenses are assigned and utilized by department. You can also leverage the new Tenant Partitioning feature to securely enable viewing of monthly billing reports by business unit, geographic location, or whatever you wish. This new Chargeback Accounting page plays an important role whenever you want to provide cost figures and other Microsoft 365 related subscription data to business unit managers responsible for their user community. The example report shown below is a subset of the new, detailed license management metrics provided by OfficeExpert 4.0.

Finally, the most exciting new feature in OfficeExpert 4.0 comes from integrated login authentication with Microsoft 365. Going forward, all OfficeExpert users can login with their own Azure AD credentials. Just click on the Microsoft Login button and enter your credentials. In case of SSO, you will be logged in immediately.

This new, secured login model will help simplify access to OfficeExpert data analytics and reporting to users outside of central IT.

If you are interested in learning more about our OfficeExpert data analytics solution and how it can help you improve license management for M365, monitor usage trends across all workloads, and maintain accurate oversight for your cloud deployment, please visit our overview page online.