Azure Admin Portal Essentials for IT Administrators

As an IT administrator, navigating the Azure Admin Portal is a crucial part of managing your organization's cloud infrastructure. To get started, you'll need to access the portal, which can be done by signing in with your Azure account credentials.

The Azure Admin Portal is divided into several sections, including the navigation menu, which provides quick access to key features like subscriptions, resource groups, and services. You can also use the search bar to find specific resources or settings.

One of the most important features of the Azure Admin Portal is the ability to monitor and manage your resources in real-time. This includes viewing resource usage, performance metrics, and logs, all from a single dashboard.

The Azure Admin Portal is a game-changer for managing your Azure resources. You can access it by navigating to the Azure portal and clicking on your account name in the top right corner.

To get started, you'll need to sign in with your Azure account credentials. This will give you access to your subscription and all its associated resources.

The Azure Admin Portal provides a centralized location for managing your Azure resources, including virtual machines, storage accounts, and networks.

Welcome to the Azure Admin Portal Basics! This comprehensive guide will walk you through the essential setup steps, best practices, and potential challenges of setting up Azure Admin Portal.

To ensure the safety of your critical business data, it's essential to set up regular backups. Microsoft 365 offers a suite of powerful productivity tools, but data loss can still happen.

The Azure Admin Portal is a powerful tool that can help you manage your organization's data with ease. With its intuitive interface, you can easily navigate through the various features and settings.

To get started with the Azure Admin Portal, you'll need to enable Microsoft 365 Backup using the admin portal. This will ensure that your critical business data is safely backed up and can be easily recovered in case of any data loss.

Here are some key features to look out for when setting up the Azure Admin Portal:

By following this guide, you'll be able to set up the Azure Admin Portal with ease and ensure the resilience of your organization's data.

To log in to the Azure Admin Portal, you'll need to start by accessing the Intune Admin Center Portal with your Azure AD credentials. You can use either Azure AD or Hybrid accounts, which are AD user accounts synced to Azure AD using AAD Connect.

To begin, open the https://intune.microsoft.com/ portal from any browser. This will take you to the login page where you'll need to enter your User Name and click the Next button.

You'll then be prompted to enter your password to complete the login process. Don't worry if you're unsure about your credentials – you can use Azure AD or Hybrid accounts to log in.

The good news is that you don't need to assign Intune licenses for admin users, thanks to the latest updates from Microsoft. You can find more details about this in the article.

Note that your admin's portal experience may vary depending on the Intune RBAC permissions and scope tags. This means you might see a different layout or features when you log in.

The left pane of the Intune Admin portal follows the same standard as Azure portals, so you'll be able to see all the Intune workflow items in the left pane of the portal.

As an Azure admin, you want to ensure that only authorized users can access the Azure AD portal. You can restrict users without administrative privileges by signing in to your Azure AD Admin Center, selecting Users –> User Settings, moving the toggle to ‘Yes’ under the Administration Portal, and selecting ‘Save’ in the top. This will prevent non-administrators from accessing the Azure AD portal by navigating to portal.azure.com.

However, this might not be enough to completely restrict user access. Azure AD users can still be accessed and managed through other means, such as the Azure AD Users node in the Intune Admin Center. This node allows you to check user properties before deploying applications or policies, but it requires additional permission.

To further manage user access, you can also use the Tenant Administration – Intune Admin Center, which allows you to define Intune RBAC permissions with scope tags and define end-user experience with custom notifications. Additionally, you can use the AAD Groups Node in Intune Admin Center Portal to manage Azure AD groups and create Azure Dynamic Device/user groups.

To restrict users without administrative privileges from accessing the Azure AD portal, you can follow these steps: sign-in to your Azure AD Admin Center, select Users –> User Settings, move the toggle to ‘Yes’ under the Administration Portal, and select ‘Save’ in the top.

You can't just stop there, though. As an admin, you should always think out-of-the-box while securing data against cyberattacks. For example, users might still try to access the portal by navigating to portal.azure.com.

You can prevent this by restricting access to the Azure AD portal. To do this, you need to sign-in to your Azure AD Admin Center and select Users –> User Settings.

Emergency Access Accounts are administrative accounts designed for emergency situations like tenant-wide lockouts.

These accounts should be exempt from Conditional Access policies to ensure they can be used when needed.

They should be monitored and alerts should be set up to notify administrators when they're used.

In the past, it was recommended that these accounts not have MFA enforced, but this guidance has been updated.

Now, it's recommended to use phishing-resistant authentication methods like FIDO2 security keys for emergency access accounts.

The AAD Groups Node in Intune Admin Center Portal is a convenient shortcut to Azure AD groups. It's accessible to Intune admins who normally have permission to create Azure Dynamic Device/user groups.

You can navigate to the AAD Groups blade to find the following options: Groups | All groups –> HTMD (Default Directory) – Azure Active Directory.

Settings is another option available on the AAD Groups node.

Activity is a useful feature that can be accessed from this node.

Troubleshooting + Support is also available for admins who need help resolving issues.

To recap, the options available on the AAD Groups node are:

The Users Node in the Intune Admin Center is a powerful tool for managing user access and properties. You can access it from the Intune Admin Center, where you can check user properties before deploying applications or policies.

This node is especially helpful for Intune admins, as it provides a centralized view of user information and saves time by avoiding the need to jump between different portals. To access all the features of the Azure AD Users node, you'll need additional permission beyond Intune admin permissions.

You can access the Users Node by navigating to the Azure AD Users node in the Intune Admin Center. From there, you can view user properties and access additional features like Activity and Troubleshooting + Support.

Here are some of the features you can access from the Users Node: