Creating a Microsoft 365 Trial Account

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About this lesson

As a Teams user, you do not need to have your own Microsoft 365 service to work with, but for us to "play" with Teams, we need a safe environment for you to use where you have full control of the settings. In this lesson, you'll learn how to acquire a free Microsoft 365 Trial account for Microsoft 365 Business Standard and create a 2nd users for use in the class.

Quick reference

Creating a Microsoft 365 free trial account

Before you begin the class, you should acquire a trial account to work with. In addition, you need to install the Teams client.

When to use

Follow the guidance in the lesson before you perform the rest of the class. 

Instructions

Setting up an account is straightforward. Simply find the main page for Microsoft 365 Business offerings and pick the Business Standard offering.

Be sure to click on the Free Trial link as shown in the lesson, and not "Buy Now." You will then be prompted to fill out the forms similar to subscribing to any online service.  

After the service is deployed, you will be shown the Microsoft 365 admin portal.

You may be tempted to download and install Microsoft Office which is included in the trial. If you don't have Office, go right ahead. However, if you do have Office, be advised it is very challenging to "revert" to a previous version of Office one it is upgraded. It is strongly recommended to not install a temporary version of Office on top of another version.

Next, launch Teams from the web page by clicking on the checkerboard in the upper left of the admin page. That will take you to a page where you can download and install the Teams client. 

Hints & tips

  • Use an email address you can access as you may need if you forget the password
  • Use a phone number that can receive a text message for validation
  • Be sure to write down the login username and password
  • You will not be charged for 30 days. Put a note on your calendar to cancel the service before then
  • If you do not have Microsoft Office, feel free to download and install Office which comes as part of the service. If you do have Office installed, do not install the Microsoft 365 version of Office on top of it.
  • The Teams client provides a richer experience than the web client so use it when you can
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  • 00:04 Creating a Microsoft 365 trial account.
  • 00:08 Using a trial account for this class is recommended.
  • 00:11 The trial account is free for 30 days, is fully functional and
  • 00:15 allows you to create up to 25 users.
  • 00:18 If you already have Microsoft 365 service with teams, you could use that account.
  • 00:24 But if you actively have people using teams,
  • 00:27 it could be confusing to them when features appear or settings change.
  • 00:31 It'd be best to explore features in a way that doesn't influence day to day
  • 00:35 business activity.
  • 00:36 In addition, some settings for
  • 00:37 teams require that you be a Microsoft 365 service administrator.
  • 00:42 You may not be a service administrator on your company's account.
  • 00:45 But you will be for the trial account.
  • 00:48 And this is a great way to see behind the scenes even if you have no ambitions to be
  • 00:52 a service administrator.
  • 00:54 If you are an administrator for your company's Microsoft 365 services,
  • 00:58 we will be making some adjustments that change the behavior of teams for everyone.
  • 01:03 So it's better to make those changes in a separate account til you're ready to
  • 01:06 deploy them company wide.
  • 01:09 Before you begin, you will need an accessible email address that
  • 01:13 you can associate with the trial account.
  • 01:17 This account is used to validate your identity and for
  • 01:20 notifications about the service.
  • 01:22 They'll also need a phone number that you can use to receive either text messages or
  • 01:28 phone calls for automated validation.
  • 01:30 In addition, a credit card is needed to sign up for the service.
  • 01:34 But no worries, you will not be charged as you have 30 days for free.
  • 01:38 Toward the end of the 30 day period,
  • 01:40 Microsoft will alert you at the email address you provided.
  • 01:44 And it's easy to cancel the subscription.
  • 01:47 So let's take a look at how this works.
  • 01:50 From Google, just search for Microsoft 365.
  • 01:56 Next, click on official Microsoft 365 site.
  • 02:04 Now you can click for business.
  • 02:08 Here you see the various Microsoft 365 service offerings.
  • 02:12 We'll select the Business Standard offering and click Try Free for One Month.
  • 02:16 Do not click the buy now because that's a different path.
  • 02:20 Now enter the email address that we discussed earlier.
  • 02:23 Any email address you can access will work just fine.
  • 02:26 Or you could create a new one just for this purpose using Gmail or Outlook.
  • 02:31 Click next and then set up account.
  • 02:36 Now you enter your name and a phone number.
  • 02:39 The phone number that you enter here is important because this will be used
  • 02:43 in the next step for validation.
  • 02:44 The rest of this can be pretty much whatever you want.
  • 02:49 Click Next.
  • 02:50 Next step is as mentioned, verification of your identity using the phone number
  • 02:55 provided, click Send Verification Code.
  • 02:58 Then check your text messages for the verification code that you are sent.
  • 03:02 Once you have that code, type it in here and then click Verify.
  • 03:08 Next you'll create a unique base domain name for your trial account.
  • 03:12 A base domain name is some company name plus.onmicrosoft.com,
  • 03:17 for example widgets.onmicrosoft.com.
  • 03:20 So you would add your name to this to be
  • 03:23 yourname@widgets.onmicrosoft.com to be your login name.
  • 03:27 Now while this is a mouthful, it helps to ensure that initial user IDs are unique
  • 03:32 among the millions of Microsoft 365 users.
  • 03:35 So here I'll try teams demo222.onmicrosoft.com.
  • 03:40 When I check availability, I can see this base domain name is already in use.
  • 03:45 I'll try teamsdemo1.
  • 03:47 So let's check myteamsdemo1.onmicrosoft.com.
  • 03:52 And we'll check availability.
  • 03:54 And it is available.
  • 03:55 So then we'll click next and set up the first user.
  • 03:58 Before you can begin to use Microsoft 365, you have to have at least one user.
  • 04:03 And so we'll set up this user here.
  • 04:04 This user will by default be the global administrator.
  • 04:08 You'll enter a name and a password.
  • 04:12 It's important to remember this username and
  • 04:14 password because you're going to need this to log in.
  • 04:16 And click Sign up.
  • 04:17 And now the last step is to enter the credit card information.
  • 04:20 Let's add two users and click Next.
  • 04:24 Now enter the information you need from your credit card.
  • 04:27 As previously mentioned,
  • 04:28 this card will not be charged as you have 30 days to cancel.
  • 04:32 Once you have entered your credit card information, click Start Trial.
  • 04:36 This will start to provision your account.
  • 04:38 This normally takes only a few minutes.
  • 04:40 And when completed, you can then access log into your account.
  • 04:44 Make a note of the user ID that's on the screen.
  • 04:47 You're going to need that when we log in later.
  • 04:49 For now, click on Go To Setup.
  • 04:52 This will automatically log you on.
  • 04:54 Snd you'll see the Office 365 Setup Wizard splash screen.
  • 04:57 Just click through this to get to the wizard itself.
  • 05:00 You'll see the various steps on the left which we will ignore for
  • 05:03 now because we don't need to do these things for this class.
  • 05:06 In the center you'll see Install Office.
  • 05:08 It's very important you do not do this if you have Office installed already.
  • 05:12 So avoid that and save a lot of trouble later.
  • 05:15 On the lower right, it says Exit Setup.
  • 05:18 Do that.
  • 05:19 And then in the upper left, click on the checkerboard.
  • 05:22 And then we'll click Teams to proceed with teams installation.
  • 05:27 Next, click Get the Windows App.
  • 05:29 And that's the most feature rich Teams experience.
  • 05:32 Once you click that, you'll see that the client begins to install.
  • 05:35 There's also an iOS and Android mobile version, which we'll cover later.
  • 05:40 Once the app has finished downloading, click on it to launch the installation.
  • 05:43 When the installation begins, you may need to log in a couple of times.
  • 05:48 When the Team app is installed,
  • 05:50 it'll launch into a few of the features to highlight.
  • 05:53 Of course bring your teams together is exactly what Teams is all about.
  • 05:57 You click Next, you'll see Chat One On One and With Groups.
  • 06:00 We'll talk about that as well.
  • 06:02 Connect Through Online Meetings, one of the best features, and file notes, apps,
  • 06:07 and more all in one place.
  • 06:08 And so now we're all set.
  • 06:10 Our Windows Team app is fully installed and ready to roll.
  • 06:15 In Review, we've discussed what you need to know before you apply for
  • 06:18 a Microsoft 365 trial account, signing up for the account,
  • 06:22 the initial administrator login experience and installing the Teams app.
  • 06:26 Next up, we'll take a walk through the app and get to know the features.

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