I recently started a new role as a Microsoft 365 and IT administrator after working as a generalist. Most of my current work consists of handling tickets—updating contacts, assigning groups and licenses, offboarding users, and troubleshooting occasional issues. The workload feels much lighter than my previous role, so I'm wondering what other responsibilities commonly fall under M365 administration. What daily or weekly checks, maintenance tasks, security reviews, automation projects, or improvement work do you handle?
5 Answers
The exact workload depends heavily on how responsibilities are divided at your company. If security, endpoint management, and first-line support belong to other teams, you may mainly own identity, licensing, collaboration services, and escalations. In that case, ask what outcomes you’re expected to own, then look for gaps such as stale accounts, weak access reviews, missing documentation, manual workflows, or services nobody is actively monitoring.
It’s normal for a new position to feel quiet at first. Use the spare capacity to map the tenant, document current configurations, review administrative access, test onboarding and offboarding procedures, and identify a few safe improvements. The role often shifts from handling requests to planning, governance, and preventing recurring issues once you become familiar with the environment.
In a more mature environment, the role can expand into architecture and service ownership: designing and maintaining Intune or another endpoint platform, managing Entra ID and conditional access, improving device onboarding, reviewing the license mix, setting up backup and recovery processes, and creating automation with Power Automate or Graph. Training users on Microsoft 365 tools and new features can also become part of the job.
Microsoft changes things constantly, so expect to spend time tracking renamed, moved, retired, or newly released features. Admin portals may look different from one week to the next. Keep your documentation current and learn PowerShell—it can turn repetitive user, group, license, and reporting tasks into quick scripts instead of manual clicks.
It’s worth building a habit of checking the message center and release notes, then deciding which changes need testing, communication, or governance before they reach users.
The ticket queue is only the visible part of the job. A lot of the valuable work is preventative: reviewing sign-in logs, checking privileged roles, auditing guest accounts, validating conditional access policies, and watching for suspicious activity. Regularly review service health and license usage too, so problems and waste are found before someone reports them.
That makes sense. My previous environment was much smaller, so I’m still adjusting to having fewer hands-on responsibilities and more room to look for improvements.