Administration – MicroTechPoint

The Top 10 SharePoint‑/Admin‑Focused Ignite 2025 Announcements

December 1, 2025December 5, 2025Brian Alderman

Here’s a summary of top 10 announcements from Microsoft Ignite 2025 that are most relevant for SharePoint / SharePoint‑admins — especially those handling governance, Copilot adoption, and enterprise content management. I picked items that impact admin workflows, governance, automation, and new AI‑powered capabilities in SharePoint. SharePoint Admin Agent (Public Preview) New AI‑powered agent that helps automatically govern content: monitors inactive or ownerless sites, detects permission sprawl / oversharing, and can apply policies (e.g. archiving or adjusting access) to improve security and compliance. Designed to reduce manual admin overhead — increasingly important as Copilot/agent usage scales. Knowledge Agent for SharePoint (Public Preview / Expanding) AI‑powered knowledge management: automatically fills metadata, surfaces… Read More

Top 10 Microsoft Ignite 2025 Highlights Every Microsoft 365 Administrator Should Know

November 25, 2025December 5, 2025Brian Alderman

Microsoft Ignite 2025 delivered one of the most transformative sets of announcements we’ve seen in years — especially for Microsoft 365 administrators responsible for productivity, security, governance, and now AI-driven operations. The shift toward agent-based workflows, deeper intelligence layers, and unified governance means the admin role is rapidly evolving from “systems operator” to “AI orchestrator.” If you’re a Microsoft 365 admin, consultant, architect, or IT decision-maker, here are the top 10 Ignite highlights that will shape how you manage and secure your environment in 2025 and beyond. Agent 365: A Unified Governance Platform for AI Agents The star of Ignite was Agent 365, Microsoft’s new central control plane for managing… Read More

SharePoint Online Premium: Admin Cheat Sheet

November 2, 2025December 5, 2025Brian Alderman

Here’s a SharePoint Online Premium Admin-Focused Cheat Sheet designed for quick reference. It’s organized by feature area with actions admins can take. Storage & File Management Feature Admin Actions Large files (up to 250 GB) Configure libraries to accept large uploads; educate users on optimal file formats. Increased site storage (up to 25 TB/site) Monitor storage usage; adjust quotas per site collection; archive old content if needed. Versioning Enable major/minor versioning; set retention limits for versions. Search & Discovery Feature Admin Actions Managed search schema Map metadata to search properties; customize refiners and results. Custom search verticals Create search experiences for departments or projects. Promoted search results Highlight key documents/pages… Read More

Understanding SharePoint Online Premium Features and Usage

October 23, 2025December 5, 2025Brian Alderman

Here’s a detailed breakdown of SharePoint Online Premium (now generally included in Microsoft 365 E3/E5 plans or SharePoint Online Plan 2) features and how a SharePoint administrator can leverage them: Large File and Storage Support Feature: Increased storage per tenant and site collection. Supports larger file uploads (up to 250 GB per file). Administrator Use: Allocate storage for high-demand team sites or department sites. Ensure that document libraries can handle large media files, datasets, or high-resolution documents without performance issues. Monitor site storage quotas to prevent overruns. Advanced Search and Content Discovery Feature: Enhanced search experience, including refiners, custom search verticals, and promoted results. Content can be surfaced using AI-powered… Read More

Using the SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT) to Migrate SharePoint Sites to Microsoft 365

July 8, 2025December 5, 2025Brian Alderman

Microsoft provides a free and simple migration tool, the SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT), to assist in the migration process from SharePoint sites to Microsoft 365. SPMT can perform SharePoint-related migrations to SharePoint Online, OneDrive, and Teams from the following: SharePoint Server 2010, 2013, 2016, and 2019 SharePoint Foundation 2010 and 2013 SharePoint Server 2010 out-of-box (OOB) workflows to Power Automate SharePoint Designer 2010 and 2013 workflows to Power Automate Note: If you are proficient with Windows PowerShell, SPMT contains all the functionality available in PowerShell to complete your migration. Understanding SPMT It is important to prepare for and understand SPMT, including supported authentication methods, migrated content permission behavior, migration assessment,… Read More

Using SMAT to assess migration from SharePoint Server to SharePoint Online

June 20, 2025December 5, 2025Brian Alderman

The SharePoint Migration Assessment Tool (SMAT) is a command-line utility designed to help organizations evaluate their current on-premises SharePoint environment and prepare for migration to SharePoint Online. SMAT assists in identifying potential issues that could arise during the migration process and provides recommendations to address these issues. It’s essentially a tool to ensure a smoother migration experience. Note: For information about the free SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT), which assists in the migration process from SharePoint sites to SharePoint Online, OneDrive, and Teams, see Using the SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT) to Migrate SharePoint Sites to Microsoft 365. SMAT Tasks Scans and Analyzes: The tool scans your existing SharePoint environment to collect information about the… Read More

Microsoft 365 Administrator Certification

March 20, 2025March 20, 2025Brian Alderman

Microsoft announced an update to the Microsoft 365 administration certification. Let’s begin with the fact that Microsoft has renamed the certification from “Microsoft 365 Certified: Enterprise Administrator Expert” to “Microsoft 365 Certified: Administrator Expert”. They dropped enterprise from the name. To obtain the previous Microsoft 365 certification, you had to pass both the MS-100 and the MS-101 exams. The new exam that has replaced the MS-100 and MS-101 is called the Microsoft 365 Administrator, MS-102 exam, which you need to pass to obtain the new Microsoft 365 Certified: Administrator Expert. However, before you study and take the MS-102 exam, you need to pass one of the prerequisite Microsoft exams. Below… Read More

Using Microsoft Migration Manager to Migrate Content to SharePoint Online and OneDrive

March 15, 2025December 5, 2025Brian Alderman

Microsoft SharePoint Online includes a free and simple migration GUI, Migration Manager, to assist you in your migration from SharePoint on-premises sites, file shares, and cloud-based document storage centers to Microsoft 365. The Migration Manager, which is located in the SharePoint Online Admin Center, can perform migrations to SharePoint Online, OneDrive, and Teams from: File shares Cloud-based document centers and Microsoft Stream Box Dropbox Google Workspace Egnyte Stream (Classic) content to Stream (on SharePoint) SharePoint Server on-premises using SPMT (can be downloaded from Migration Manager) 2010 OOB (Out-Of-Box) workflows to Power Automate SharePoint Designer 2010 and 2013 workflows to Power Automate SharePoint Server 2010, 2013, 2016, and 2019 SharePoint Foundation… Read More

Introduction to Microsoft SQL Server Transact-SQL (T-SQL)

December 30, 2024March 20, 2025Brian Alderman

Microsoft SQL Server Transact-SQL (T-SQL) is a proprietary extension of SQL (Structured Query Language) used by Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase ASE (Adaptive Server Enterprise). T-SQL is a powerful and versatile language that provides procedural programming capabilities and standard SQL functionality found in all RDBMS (Relational Database Management System) products. RDBMS is a collection of programs and capabilities that enable IT teams, database administrators (DBA), and database programmers to create, update, administer and interact with a relational database. A relational database is a database that uses tables to organize data into rows and columns that contain values that are related to each other. Microsoft SQL Server is one of… Read More

Administering M365 Governance using Rencore’s Governance Tool

September 18, 2024November 5, 2024Brian Alderman

You can’t become an advanced M365 administrator without understanding the importance of governance and how it affects and protects your information. Governance is necessary to ensure you are protecting your critical M365 information assets, while also minimizing risks associated with those assets. Microsoft 365 includes a minimal level of governance, but there are many more capabilities necessary to protect your assets stored in SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, Exchange, Loop, Entra ID, Viva Engage, Power Apps, Power Platform, and Copilot. With that in mind, I’d like to strongly suggest that you take some time to research a powerful, dynamic, and full-featured governance tool available by Rencore. The seamless integration of this product… Read More