Provisioning a Tenant

Tenant name considerations

After many (many!) years of customer requests, the tenant-managed domain name can be changed after it has been selected. Technically, you can’t change the tenant domain, but you can add a new tenant fallback domain. As such, it’s still important to choose something that is appropriate for your organization. The tenant name is visible in a handful of locations, so be sure to select a name that doesn’t reveal any personally identifiable information or trade secrets and looks professionally appropriate for the type of organization you’re representing. There is also a SharePoint tenant rename process in preview, but it’s limited to organizations that have less than 10,000 sites provisioned. For more information, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/setup/add-or-replace-your-onmicrosoftcom-domain?view=o365-worldwide.

Provisioning a Tenant

Provisioning a tenant is a relatively simple task requiring you to fill out a basic contact form and choose a tenant name. Microsoft offers a variety of trial subscriptions to help people understand the capabilities of the platform.

Trial information

Microsoft has updated its subscription plans by removing Teams from the included applications. The offers are now labeled No Teams, though Teams can be added through the Microsoft 365 admin center once the trial is activated. You can view available Microsoft 365 and Office 365 offers here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/microsoft365-plans-and-pricing.

Currently, available trial subscriptions require you to provide payment information. Trials will roll over as a fully paid subscription after the trial period ends. If you’re standing up a trial tenant to study for the exam, you’ll want to make sure you cancel it as soon as you’re done using it. Figure 1.2 shows the trial sign-up page:

Figure 1.2: Starting a trial subscription

The sign-up process may prompt you for a phone number to be used during verification (either through a text/SMS or call) to help ensure that you’re a valid potential customer and not an automated system.

After verifying your status as a human, you’ll be prompted to select your managed domain, as shown in Figure 1.3:

Figure 1.3: Choosing a managed domain

In the Domain name field, you’ll be prompted to enter a domain name. If the domain name value you select is already taken, you’ll receive an error and will be prompted to select a new name.

After you’ve finished, you can enter payment information for a trial subscription. Note the end date of the trial; if you fail to cancel by this date, you’ll be automatically billed for the number of licenses you have configured during your trial!

Now that you’ve got a tenant activated, it’s time to move on to the actual SC-300 objectives as discussed in the next section!

Advanced setup guides

While this book focuses primarily on the requirements for the SC-300 exam objectives, there is a lot to learn in a tenant. You can use the advanced deployment guides in the admin center to explore and set up other features of your Microsoft 365 environment. For more information, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/setup-guides-for-microsoft-365?view=o365-worldwide.