Office 365 administrator role overview

Role

What they do in Office 365

Global administrator

Accesses all administrative features in the Office 365 suite of services in your plan, including Skype for Business. By default, the person who signs up to buy Office 365 becomes a global admin.

Global admins are the only admins who can assign other admin roles. You can have more than one global admin in your organization. As a best practice, it is recommended that only a few people in your company have this role as it reduces the risk to your business.

Billing administrator

Makes purchases, manages subscriptions, manages support tickets, and monitors service health.

Exchange Administrator

Manages mailboxes and anti-spam policies for your business.

SharePoint Administrator

Manages the document storage for your business on SharePoint Online. They can also assign other people to be Site Collection administrators and Term Store administrators.

Permissions assigned to SharePoint sites are completely separate from the Office 365 global admin role. You can be a global admin without access to a SharePoint site if you weren't added to it or didn't create the site.

Password administrator

Resets passwords, manages service requests, and monitors service health. Password admins are limited to resetting passwords for users.

Skype for Business Administrator

Configures Skype for Business for your organization and reviews usage reports.

Service administrator

Opens support requests and views the service dashboard and message center. They have view only permissions except for opening support tickets and reading them.

User management administrator

Resets passwords, monitors service health, adds and deletes user accounts, and manages service requests. The user management admin can’t delete a global admin, create other admin roles, or reset passwords for global, billing, Exchange, SharePoint, Compliance, and Skype for Business admins.