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Last Updated Sep 18, 2018

Office 365 Admin Delegation

As an Office 365 customer, you have the ability to offer Office 365 admin delegation to other people in your organization or a partner. Office 365 admin delegation can help lighten the administrative workload or outsource it entirely. To make sure delegated admins only have the appropriate level of access, you can set delegation in a number of different ways.

Office 365 Admin Delegation through Partners

If you’d like to outsource all, or some, of your Office 365 administration tasks to a certified Microsoft Cloud Partner, you must first authorize the partner as a delegated administrator. The partner will need to first send you an offer for delegated administration via email, which will contain instructions for granting them the appropriate level of permissions.

To grant these permissions:

  1. Review the terms of the partner’s email
  2. Click the link, taking you to an authorization page in Office 365
  3. Under Delegated administration, select Yes to grant access to a partner for admin delegation

To delete a delegated admin in Office 365:

  1. In the Office 365 admin center, select Users then Delegated Admins
  2. Select the partner with delegated admin access
  3. Click Delete
  4. Click Yes to confirm the deletion

Office 365 Admin Delegation through Admin Roles

For some organizations, it may not be feasible for one employee to handle all administration duties in Office 365. To help manage this workload, Office 365 offers several different types of admin roles:

  • Billing admin
  • Global admin
  • Password admin
  • Service admin
  • User management admin

To assign an Admin Role to an existing user:

  1. In the Office 365 admin center, select Users then Active Users
  2. Select the user(s) who you want to change admin roles
  3. Click Edit, then Next
  4. Under Assign role, select Yes or No, then Next
  5. Click Submit, then Finish

As an organization grows in size, it can often be difficult to keep track of which users have specific admin rights. An organization can be susceptible to substantial security breaches if the wrong employee has global admin rights.