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Demo Tenant

Brass Contributor

Hi there

 

I'm new to all this and historically I'm a support technician, but trying to get ahead with 365 as we're moving towards it.  My main focus at the moment is Teams but trying to get a general handle on lots of stuff.

 

I'm looking for the best way to create a demo tenant (including self-funded if necessary).  My employer isn't a Microsoft partner so I believe the demos.microsoft.com option won't be open to me.

 

Does anyone have any advice on this from their own experience?

Many thanks

Jonathan

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Solution

Hi @jhobdell 

 

Provided you have a valid credit card, you can sign up to Office/Microsoft 365 directly. I was in a very similar position to you a couple of years ago so I went this route to get some hands on experience of 365 as the company I was with at the time wouldn't fund it. 

 

You can sign up as a trial - although you will still need to put in credit card details, you can cancel all licences just before the 30 day trial is up and won't be charged. I however kept a licence going so I could continue to test and try out O365 stuff without impacting production; for me I just counted it as training expenditure and provided I was getting training value out of it (I was) then it was worthwhile.

 

You can also do 30 day trials of other suites after you've signed up. For example, I started a 30 day trial on Office 365 business premium. About 6 months later I trialled the Microsoft 365 Business plan. If I recall correct, the trial gives you 25 licences to play with.

 

The one thing I found useful before signing up to the trial was making sure I had a solid plan on what I intended to do during the trial - it sounds nerdy, but I made sure I had a spare domain, various test VM's set up so I could replicate collaboration, CSV of the 25 odd dummy users ready for upload, a lab exchange box to try out Exchange hybrid etc. Basically a big checklist of "By the end of the trial, what skills do I want to gain or actions to say I've done".  the 30 days can go very quickly and you don't want to waste time doing set up when you can be actually doing stuff.

 

Another useful thing I found was to start small and work up - i.e. Office 365 business Premium doesn't have the MDM stuff that Microsoft 365 Business does, which in turn has less features than E3 etc etc - there can be quite a bit to go through with which I would have found overwhelming - get familiar with the core things you are interested in (Teams, etc) and then look at stuff like Intune later rather than try it all in one go.

 

Anyway, that's been my experience. YMMV, of course 

 

Hope this helps,

Mark

@jhobdell 

Hope this post finds you well :)

I am into adoption consultant role and i totally understand the situation you are into. I totally agree with what @HidMov  briefed about subscriptions.

here is a quick link for you to compare the MS Teams licensing to get an idea https://products.office.com/en-in/microsoft-teams/free

 

Here is the MS Teams adoption Guide as well to get to know what MS Teams is capable of and how it would impact or change ways how people collaborate : https://teamworktools.azurewebsites.net/tft/index.html 

 

I would definitely recommend to build your case study to present to your colleagues for successful adoption. It might just pave way for a success story :). 

 

All the best. 

@YadleyB Many thanks for your reply and hope this also finds you well.  I'm currently working through Microsoft's Service Adoption specialist course on EdX with a view to improving our roll-out process (for MS365 stuff at least).

 

I'll definitely do some comparing and see what the best option will be, and whether my employer will allow me to do it in a test tenant alongside our production environment or something.

 

Thanks again and best wishes!

@HidMov Thanks for all the information!  There's a lot to go through, I think, to be sure of what I'm doing.

 

I might start with seeing if the company is willing to create a dummy tenant - or there might be one already that I can use.

 

Thanks again for your help!

Best wishes

Jonathan

@jhobdell

 

As far as I know anyone can sign up to this - https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/office . Give you an environment for a year free. 

@Andrew Hodges Awesome!  I'll take a look.  Many thanks!

@jhobdell :) All the best. Great way to begin. 

 

1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by Deleted
Solution

Hi @jhobdell 

 

Provided you have a valid credit card, you can sign up to Office/Microsoft 365 directly. I was in a very similar position to you a couple of years ago so I went this route to get some hands on experience of 365 as the company I was with at the time wouldn't fund it. 

 

You can sign up as a trial - although you will still need to put in credit card details, you can cancel all licences just before the 30 day trial is up and won't be charged. I however kept a licence going so I could continue to test and try out O365 stuff without impacting production; for me I just counted it as training expenditure and provided I was getting training value out of it (I was) then it was worthwhile.

 

You can also do 30 day trials of other suites after you've signed up. For example, I started a 30 day trial on Office 365 business premium. About 6 months later I trialled the Microsoft 365 Business plan. If I recall correct, the trial gives you 25 licences to play with.

 

The one thing I found useful before signing up to the trial was making sure I had a solid plan on what I intended to do during the trial - it sounds nerdy, but I made sure I had a spare domain, various test VM's set up so I could replicate collaboration, CSV of the 25 odd dummy users ready for upload, a lab exchange box to try out Exchange hybrid etc. Basically a big checklist of "By the end of the trial, what skills do I want to gain or actions to say I've done".  the 30 days can go very quickly and you don't want to waste time doing set up when you can be actually doing stuff.

 

Another useful thing I found was to start small and work up - i.e. Office 365 business Premium doesn't have the MDM stuff that Microsoft 365 Business does, which in turn has less features than E3 etc etc - there can be quite a bit to go through with which I would have found overwhelming - get familiar with the core things you are interested in (Teams, etc) and then look at stuff like Intune later rather than try it all in one go.

 

Anyway, that's been my experience. YMMV, of course 

 

Hope this helps,

Mark

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