Getting Started with Microsoft 365 Business Basic: A Practical Guide for Small Teams"
Asim Baral

Asim Baral @asim_baral_30dc94383b418b

Joined:
May 21, 2025

Getting Started with Microsoft 365 Business Basic: A Practical Guide for Small Teams"

Publish Date: May 23
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If you’re managing a small business or an IT environment and looking for a cost-effective, cloud-based productivity suite, Microsoft 365 Business Basic is a solid choice. It offers essential services like email hosting, cloud storage, and collaboration tools — all accessible through the web. While it doesn’t include the desktop Office apps, it gives you a full suite of productivity tools in the cloud, making it perfect for remote teams and lightweight operations.

In this blog, I’ll walk you through what Microsoft 365 Business Basic includes, how to set it up for your organization, and how to use PowerShell scripts to automate common administrative tasks.

What is Microsoft 365 Business Basic?
Business Basic includes:

Web and mobile versions of Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint

Exchange Online with 50 GB mailbox per user

OneDrive for Business with 1 TB per user

Microsoft Teams for chat, calls, meetings

SharePoint Online for internal file sharing and collaboration

What it doesn’t include are the desktop versions of the Office apps — Word, Excel, etc. You’ll use the browser versions instead.

Initial Setup
Once you subscribe to Microsoft 365 Business Basic, the first thing you’ll do is set up your Microsoft 365 admin center, add a custom domain, and create users.

To verify your custom domain (like yourcompany.com), Microsoft will ask you to add a TXT record in your DNS:

Type: TXT
Name: @
Value: MS=ms12345678
TTL: 3600
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After the domain is verified, you can begin adding users.

Creating Users with PowerShell
If you're managing several users, it’s more efficient to use PowerShell rather than the web portal.

Here’s how to get started with Microsoft 365 PowerShell:

# Connect to Microsoft 365
Connect-MsolService
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Once connected, you can create a user:

New-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName john@yourdomain.com `
             -DisplayName "John Doe" `
             -FirstName John `
             -LastName Doe `
             -LicenseAssignment yourtenant:BUSINESS_BASIC `
             -UsageLocation US
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This command creates a new user and assigns them a Business Basic license in one go. Replace yourtenant:BUSINESS_BASIC with your actual license SKU (you can list these using Get-MsolAccountSku).

Bulk Import Users
If you have a CSV file with multiple users, you can automate the process:

# Import CSV and create users
$users = Import-Csv "C:\UsersList.csv"

foreach ($user in $users) {
    New-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName $user.UserPrincipalName `
                 -DisplayName $user.DisplayName `
                 -FirstName $user.FirstName `
                 -LastName $user.LastName `
                 -LicenseAssignment yourtenant:BUSINESS_BASIC `
                 -UsageLocation US
}
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A sample UsersList.csv might look like this:

UserPrincipalName,FirstName,LastName,DisplayName
alice@yourdomain.com,Alice,Smith,Alice Smith
bob@yourdomain.com,Bob,Jones,Bob Jones
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Set Up Email with Exchange Online
Users can access their email through the website, application, or Outlook mobile app.

To create mailbox aliases or set mailbox properties via PowerShell:

# Add alias
Set-Mailbox -Identity "john@yourdomain.com" -EmailAddresses @{add="support@yourdomain.com"}
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This adds a support alias to John's mailbox.

Set OneDrive and Teams Policies
While most settings are managed in the portal, you can automate Teams policy assignment:

# Connect to Teams PowerShell
Connect-MicrosoftTeams

# Assign messaging policy
Grant-CsTeamsMessagingPolicy -PolicyName "BasicMessagingPolicy" -Identity john@yourdomain.com
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Security Features to Enable
Even on Business Basic, security is critical. Here are a few must-dos:

Enable MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication)

Go to https://admin.microsoft.com → Users → Active users → Multi-factor authentication.

Create password policies
Set-MsolPasswordPolicy -DomainName yourdomain.com -NotificationDays 14 -ValidityPeriod 90

Block legacy authentication
Use Conditional Access in Azure AD to block outdated protocols like IMAP and POP3.

Conclusion
Microsoft 365 Business Basic is a strong entry-level offering for small teams that need secure email, collaboration, and cloud storage. With a bit of PowerShell scripting, you can handle everything from user creation to license assignment efficiently — saving hours of manual work.

If you’re a sysadmin or IT support professional, learning how to automate Microsoft 365 tasks using PowerShell is a powerful addition to your toolkit.

Let me know in the comments how you're using Microsoft 365 Business Basic in your organization — or if you’d like to see a follow-up post on managing Teams, SharePoint, or securing email flow! For more information, visit idream.com.np page.

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