Microsoft 365 Administration Foundations for a Technical VA

Course purpose

This is a 1-week self-paced introductory course designed for a technical VA with light IT exposure. It lays the foundation for routine Microsoft 365 tenant navigation, user investigation, license review, and basic workload triage.

This course is written to work as LMS content. Each day is a stand-alone module and follows the same pattern:

• learning goals
• practical lesson content
• screenshots and diagrams
• daily assignment
• quiz
• escalation notes

Role assumption

The learner is assumed to have Global Reader only.

That means the learner should focus on:

• finding information
• understanding what the setting means
• documenting what they observed
• identifying whether a change is needed
• escalating clearly when write access is required

That also means the learner should not promise that they can directly perform routine changes such as adding a user, assigning a license, changing group membership, editing Teams policies, or changing SharePoint sharing settings. They should learn where those actions are performed so they can investigate and prepare work accurately.

Course map

• Day 1 - Portal orientation and navigation
• Day 2 - Users and licenses
• Day 3 - Entra identity basics and user investigation
• Day 4 - Exchange and Teams basics
• Day 5 - SharePoint, OneDrive, and sharing
• Answer key
• Glossary

Suggested pacing

• 20 to 30 minutes reading and screenshot review
• 30 to 45 minutes guided exploration in the tenant
• 20 to 30 minutes daily assignment
• 10 to 15 minutes quiz
• 10 minutes compare with answer key

What “success” looks like after week 1

By the end of the week, the learner should be able to:

• move confidently between the Microsoft 365 admin center, Entra, Exchange, Teams, and SharePoint admin centers
• locate a user and summarize what they can see about the account
• check whether a user appears licensed for the service they need
• tell which portal to use for a mail issue, Teams issue, or SharePoint/OneDrive issue
• recognize when an issue needs escalation because a change must be made
• write a clean, useful investigation note

Evidence standard

Every investigation note should include:

• portal used
• exact page used
• user or object checked
• what was observed
• what is still unknown
• whether the next step is another read-only check or escalation

Screenshot and source notes

This course includes Microsoft screenshots sourced from official Microsoft Learn pages current as of March 2026. See the “Source notes” section at the bottom of each module.