Monitoring Microsoft 365 User Experience
24×7 in real-time
Monitoring Microsoft 365 fosters User Adoption and Business Performance
Microsoft 365 deployments include a combination of highly complex components, such as Teams, SharePoint, Exchange, AAD Connect, and more. Therefore, although unlikely, a failure at any time cannot be ruled out. The interdependence of the various M365 elements often makes it hard to retain an overview of the deployment when taken as a whole. In the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, your Microsoft 365 Service Health Dashboard may tell you that there are no issues, yet users send tickets, saying they have a hard time logging in to their SharePoint.
The NiCE Active 365 Management Pack simplifies this complexity. It discovers and reveals performance issues tracked down to users, groups, mailboxes, locations, devices, you name it.
NiCE IT Management Solutions is a long-term Microsoft Business Partner with Gold status for Application Development and Datacenter
What is Microsoft 365?
Microsoft 365 brings together best-in-class productivity apps with powerful cloud services, device management, and advanced security in one, connected experience. While Office 2019 came with essentials such as Word, Excel, OneNote, and Skype, Microsoft 365 now includes apps such as Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Exchange Online, and many more.
360° Monitoring of All Your Business-Vital Microsoft 365 Services
Applying Highest Security Standards when Monitoring Microsoft 365
Security Aware by Permission-based Building Blocks
The NiCE Active 365 Management Pack is built with the “principle of least privilege” and uses different permission-level building blocks according to the sensitivity of the monitored data.
The building block approach of the NiCE Active 365 Management Pack allows for compliant, secure, well-organized, and reportable access to monitoring sensitive data. Each building block has pre-defined minimal access rights, allowing for highly granular, yet de-personalized real-world user data.
Configuration & Hardening for Secure M365 Monitoring
The Microsoft Graph-based collection mechanism, as well as the building block approach, enables a very easy, straightforward, and secure implementation and setup.
The NiCE Active 365 Management Pack uses one single configuration file for all product components. Further security-relevant settings in the Azure Tenant can be monitored. This includes, for example, if application secrets are about to expire, or if enterprise applications are configured in a way that they are visible to all users.
Double-Protected Application Secrets in M365 Monitoring
The NiCE Active 365 Management Pack makes sure the Application Secrets are stored outside of SCOM. Application Secrets are the key to accessing the Service Principal in Azure to run Graph API requests, being the gateway to all data. Losing the Application Secrets would raise major security concerns.
The NiCE Active 365 Management Pack approach ensures Application Secrets do not get lost, passed on, or could be otherwise compromised.
Sealed & Secured Microsoft 365 Data Collection
For security compliance, only the NiCE Collector (TCRC) can access M365 data. The Collector itself is sealed and secured. The TCRC is located in your Azure tenant and your subscription, so you have complete and sole authority over the deployment and records. The records are located in the Cosmo DB inside Azure.
The TCRC springs to life upon a change notification, which extracts, processes, and mirrors the consolidated data back into SCOM. The NiCE Management Pack does not see any personal data stored in the call records. It displays the processed, aggregated data.
Secrets and connection data are stored in the Azure Key Vault, to make them as safe as can be.
Embedded Microsoft 365 Secure Score Monitoring
The NiCE Active 365 Management Pack integrates Secure Score monitoring into SCOM. This gives you new possibilities such as additional alerting options, as well as status- and drill-down-to-source views. Having these options at hand will give you a much better understanding of cross-structural security issues. On top of that, the reporting will be much easier.
What is Microsoft Secure Score?
Microsoft Secure Score is a measurement of an organization’s security posture. Lower numbers indicate additional improvement actions need to be taken. It can be found at https://security.microsoft.com/securescore in the Microsoft 365 Defender portal.
Following the Secure Score recommendations can protect your organization from threats. From a centralized dashboard in the Microsoft 365 Defender portal, organizations can monitor and work on the security of their Microsoft 365 identities, apps, and devices.
Self-Monitoring Ensures Best Possible Integrity
The inbuilt self-monitoring of all NiCE Management Packs ensures all data is captured and processed as defined, so that there is no monitoring, graphing, or reporting gaps.
Visualize Microsoft 365 Performance for Quick Insights
The NiCE Active 365 Management Pack Auto-Discovery reveals and maps out your entire hybrid and cloud-only deployment.
It lists components from the Tenant, down to the Users, SharePoint sub-sites, Teams channels, OneDrive folders, and Exchange queues. Get quick insights into the performance of your deployment for Microsoft 365. This includes Licensing, Users, the Health States of the Identity Service, Mobile Device Management for Microsoft 365, Microsoft 365 Portal, Microsoft 365 Client Applications, and the Microsoft Current Secure Score.
On top of that, you can use any dashboarding solution, such as Power BI, within your System Center environment, to build stunning dashboards. There is also a free M365 community dashboard that comes with the SquaredUp Community Edition.
Easy Reporting for Microsoft 365, including SLA and OLA Reports
Easily get detailed reports on Microsoft 365, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Exchange usage, including licensing, AAD synchronization, Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and Operation Level Agreements (OLAs).
All reporting data is stored in your existing System Center data warehouse. With the reporting engines available in your environment, you can report on M365 adoption, mailbox migrations, Microsoft 365 license usage, and more.
Setup & Configure Microsoft 365 Service Monitoring with Ease
Start monitoring your Microsoft 365 services within minutes. The setup via SCOM is super easy as the included auto-discovery detects all M365 monitoring components in your tenant for you. Once the entire environment is discovered, data starts coming in based on the default thresholds. Pick and choose which threshold to change or add to refine the data streams to your business cases.
Integrate M365 Monitoring into Microsoft System Center Operations Manager
The NiCE Active 365 Management Pack fully leverages your investment in System Center. No need to invest in new databases, servers, or other infrastructure typically required by monitoring tools. The monitoring infrastructure is already configured and set up. Even better, your IT staff are already familiar with the tools, thus ensuring a fast learning curve. The NiCE Active 365 Management Pack Auto-Discovery reveals and maps out your entire hybrid and cloud-only deployment. It lists components from the Tenant down to the Users, SharePoint sub-sites, Teams Channels, OneDrive folders, and Exchange Queues.
FAQ
What SCOM versions?
The NiCE Active 365 Management Pack supports Microsoft SCOM 2012 R2, 2016, 2019, and 2022.
Other requirements?
The NiCE Active 365 Management Pack requires Microsoft Monitoring Agents.
What M365 versions?
Office 365 platform, Exchange Online, Exchange Server 2013, and 2016, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Teams, and Azure AD Connect.
Community & References?
Yes. Please see these blog posts by
Ruben Zimmermann
Anoop Nair
Tao Yang
System Center Wiki
Marnix Wolf
Licensing?
The NiCE Active 365 Management Pack is licensed per Tenant and user licenses attached to it.
Free Trial?
Free trials are available. Please scroll down to the contact form to get in touch.
Start advanced Microsoft 365 service monitoring now
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We are looking forward to receiving your request.
Kind regards and keep on rocking,
Your NiCE IT Management Solutions Team