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About this lesson
Create an E5 sandbox trial account so you can work through this course without using your real personal or work account.
Exercise files
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Quick reference
Create a Microsoft 365 E5 Trial Sandbox Account (Optional)
We create a Microsoft 365 sandbox if we want to practice our skills in a realistic environment complete with sample data.
Instructions
The Microsoft 365 Developer Program offers free trial E5 sandbox accounts. A sandbox account uses fake data to simulate a live account within the Microsoft 365 environment. It comes complete with sample data including 17 fake users, a populated email account, and fake teams in Microsoft Teams.
We create a sandbox account using a special tenant name that ends with onmicrosoft.com. All users will have this tenant name as part of their email address.
Create a Sandbox Account
- Go to developer.microsoft.com
- Click Set up E5 Sandbox
- Choose Instant sandbox
- Click Next
- Work through the step-by-step-wizard
Check the Sandbox
Once created, we can check the sandbox is working by seeing if the fake users have been created within the tenant.
- From the Microsoft 365 home page, click the App Launcher
- Click Admin
- Click Users and Active Users
If the sandbox has been set up correctly, we should see 17 fake users all with email addresses based on the tenant we created.
Hints & tips
- You will be asked to enter your credit card details during the setup process, so if you do not with to pay for the sandbox, be sure to cancel your account before the trial period ends.
- 00:04 It is entirely possible that we might have multiple
- 00:07 accounts when we're working in Microsoft 365.
- 00:10 For example, I have a business account that I use for work and
- 00:14 a personal account that I use for everything else.
- 00:17 And as we've already seen in previous lessons, we can click on our profile photo
- 00:22 in the top right hand corner to not only see which account we are signed in as, but
- 00:27 also to switch between our different accounts.
- 00:30 It's a simple case of selecting the alternative account from the drop down,
- 00:35 typing in a password and clicking on OK to switch to that account.
- 00:39 Now, it's worth noting that the applications and the services that you
- 00:43 have access to when you switch to another account might be different.
- 00:46 As we already know, we don't get as many features when we're using a personal
- 00:51 account compared to when we're using a business account.
- 00:54 So just be aware that there will be some differences if you have different
- 00:57 account types.
- 00:58 Now in this course, we're going to be switching between different applications.
- 01:03 We're going to be creating files, we're going to be communicating via
- 01:07 Microsoft Teams, and creating sites in SharePoint.
- 01:11 Now if you're going to work through this course using the account that you use for
- 01:16 work, that might cause some problems.
- 01:18 You might not necessarily want to be creating all of these training files and
- 01:22 test files in the same account that you use for work or
- 01:26 even your personal account.
- 01:28 Now, we've already seen one option, and
- 01:30 that is to create a free outlook.com email account.
- 01:33 This will give you access to some of the basic applications and services.
- 01:38 But it won't give you access to things like a fully featured Microsoft Teams,
- 01:42 SharePoint, or Exchange Server.
- 01:44 And we are going to be utilizing some of these applications as we go through this
- 01:49 course.
- 01:50 Now if you're happy to stick with your free Outlook account and
- 01:52 follow along as best you can, that is absolutely fine.
- 01:55 However, if you would like a more realistic experience and
- 01:59 be able to practice some of the more advanced features,
- 02:02 then you might want to consider setting up a trial sandbox account.
- 02:07 And what a sandbox is, is basically a simulation of the real world.
- 02:11 A sandbox account comes loaded with sample data.
- 02:14 So we have 16 fictitious users with fictitious email addresses.
- 02:20 We have Outlook emails already populated into the account so we can work with them.
- 02:25 We also have teams already set up in Microsoft Teams.
- 02:29 So this is a great way of getting a realistic environment without having to
- 02:33 effectively mess up your live working environment.
- 02:36 And I just want to reiterate, this lesson is entirely optional,
- 02:40 but if that is something that you do want to do,
- 02:43 then let's take a look at how you'd go about doing this.
- 02:46 Now you can set up a trial tenant and
- 02:49 sandbox sample data in the Developer Program area of Microsoft 365.
- 02:54 So if you type into Google Developer Program sandbox,
- 02:57 it will take you to the correct page where you can set up your sandbox trial account.
- 03:02 And we have two choices.
- 03:03 We can set up an instant sandbox, that's the one that comes with all of the users
- 03:08 and sample data, or we can configure our own sandbox.
- 03:12 Now, just for ease of use, we're going to use the Instant sandbox, and it is
- 03:16 literally a case of selecting it, clicking on Next, and walking through the process.
- 03:21 I can't show you the entire process because I already have my sandbox account
- 03:25 created and I can't do it again.
- 03:27 But it is very straightforward just to follow through the wizard.
- 03:30 Now, note, you will be asked to enter in your credit card details because this is
- 03:34 a subscription service.
- 03:36 So just bear that in mind as you're going through.
- 03:39 And you can then make the decision as to if you want to create this sandbox
- 03:42 account or not.
- 03:44 If you do choose to proceed, once you've set it up,
- 03:46 if you go into your admin settings,
- 03:48 you're going to be able to see all of those fake users attached to your tenant.
- 03:53 You'll be able to send emails to these users.
- 03:56 You'll be able to app mention them in applications like Teams and SharePoint.
- 04:00 You can co-author with them in Word documents.
- 04:03 And if you open up Microsoft Teams,
- 04:05 you'll see that we already have teams populated and ready to go.
- 04:10 So creating a sandbox account is a really quick way of getting
- 04:15 a realistic environment in which you can practice your Microsoft 365 skills.
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