O365 Portal Connectivity Test

If the Office 365 portal is unavailable / inaccessible, then users will not be able to use the Microsoft Office suite and other critical services (Exchange server, Skype for Business, SharePoint, etc.) on the cloud, until such time the connection to the portal is restored. The lack of HTTP/S connectivity, even for a brief while, can severely hamper business correspondence, affect user productivity, and ultimately hit revenues. To avoid this, administrators should continuously track the connectivity to the portal, so that they promptly detect any break/slowness in connectivity, and proactively initiate corrective measures. This is where the O365 Portal Connectivity test helps!

This test emulates an HTTP connection to the portal URL, portal.office.com. In the process, the test reports whether the portal is accessible or not, and if so, how long it takes to connect to the portal. This way, the test proactively reveals poor connectivity to the portal, and thus enables administrators to initiate remedial measures before users complain.

Target of the test : Office 365

Agent deploying the test : A remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for the Office 365 portal being monitored.

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameters	Description
Test period	How often should the test be executed
Host	The host for which the test is to be configured. By default, this is portal.office.com
Tenant Name	This parameter applies only if you want the eG agent to use Azure AD Certificate-based Authentication for accessing and monitoring an O365 tenant and its resources. Azure AD certificate-based authentication (CBA) enables customers to allow or require users to authenticate with X.509 certificates against their Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) for applications and browser sign-in. When monitoring highly secure Office 365 environments, you can configure the eG agent to identify itself to a tenant using a valid X.509 certificate, so that it is allowed secure access to the tenant and its resources. By default, the value of this parameter is none. This means that, by default, the eG agent does not use certificate-based authentication to connect to an O365 tenant. On the other hand, if you want the eG agent to use this modern authentication technique to securely access a tenant's resources, you should do the following: Enable Azure AD Certificate-based authentication for the target O365 tenant; this can be achieved manually, via the Office 365 portal, or automatically, using Powershell scripts we provide. For the manual procedure, refer to Manually Enabling Certificate-based Authentication For an Office 365 Tenant. For the automatic procedure, refer to Automatically Fulfilling Pre-requisites in a Modern Authentication-Enabled Environment. When enabling certificate-based authentication, an X.509 certificate will be generated for the target tenant. Configure the Tenant Name parameter with the name of the tenant for which certificate-based authentication is enabled. Using the tenant name, the eG agent will be able to read the details of the X.509 certificate that is generated for that tenant, and use that certificate to access that tenant's resources. To determine the tenant name, do the following: Log in to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center as an administrator. Under Setup, click on Domains. Find a domain that ends with .onmicrosoft.com - this is your Microsoft O365 tenant name.
O365 User Name, O365 Password, and Confirm Password	These parameters need to be configured only if the Tenant Name parameter is set to none. On the other hand, if a valid Tenant Name is configured, then you should set these parameters to none . For execution, this test requires the privileges of an O365 user who is vested with the View-Only Audit Logs permission. Configure the credentials of such a user against O365 User Name and O365 Password text boxes. Confirm the password by retyping it in the Confirm Password text box. While you can use the credentials of any existing O365 user with the afore-said privileges, it is recommended that you create a special user for monitoring purposes using the Office 365 portal and use the credentials of that user here. To know how to manually create a new user using the Office 365 portal and assign the required privileges to that user, refer to theCreating a New User in the Office 365 Portaltopic. You can also use eG's proprietary PowerShell script to automatically create a new user, or assign the required privileges to an existing user. To know how to use this script, refer to theAutomatically Fulfilling Pre-requisites in a Basic Authentication-Enabled Environmenttopic.
O365 Domain	This parameter needs to be configured only if the Tenant Name parameter is set to none. On the other hand, if a valid Tenant Name is configured, then you should set this parameter to none . To have a personalized business email address, team site address, or even an account name, you set up a domain name with Office 365. A domain is a unique name that appears after the @ sign in email addresses, and after www. in web addresses. It typically takes the form of your organization's name and a standard Internet suffix, such as yourbusiness.com or stateuniversity.edu. Office 365 gives you an initial domain name to use. By default, this will be of the format: *.onmicrosoft.com - eg., abc.onmicrosoft.com. To enable this test to pull metrics, you need to configure the test with the name of this initial domain. Therefore, configure the O365 Domain parameter with the name of the initial domain. To know what is your Office 365 initial domain name, do the following: Log on to the Microsoft Office 365 Online Portal using an administrative account. Under Management, click on Domains. The initial domain should be listed with a name ending with .onmicrosoft.com.
Domain, Domain User Name, Domain Password, and Confirm Password	These parameters are applicable only if the eG agent needs to communicate with the Office 365 portal via a Proxy server. In this case, in the Domain text box, specify the name of the Windows domain to which the eG agent host belongs. In the Domain User Name text box, mention the name of a valid domain user with login rights to the eG agent host. Provide the password of that user in the Domain Password text box and confirm that password by retyping it in the Confirm Password text box. On the other hand, if the eG agent is not behind a Proxy server, then you need not disturb the default setting of these parameters. By default, these parameters are set to none.
Proxy Host, Proxy Port, Proxy User Name, and Proxy Password	These parameters are applicable only if the eG agent needs to communicate with the Office 365 portal via a Proxy server. In this case, provide the IP/host name and port number of the Proxy server that the eG agent should use in the Proxy Host and Proxy Port parameters, respectively. If the Proxy server requires authentication, then specify the credentials of a valid Proxy user against the Proxy User Name and Proxy Password text boxes. Confirm that password by retyping it in the Confirm Password text box. If the Proxy server does not require authentication, then specify none against the Proxy User Name, Proxy Password, and Confirm Password text boxes. On the other hand, if the eG agent is not behind a Proxy server, then you need not disturb the default setting of any of the Proxy-related parameters. By default, these parameters are set to none.

Measurements made by the test

Measurement

Description

Measurement Unit

Interpretation

Connection status

Indicates whether/not the portal is accessible over HTTP/S.

If HTTP/S connectivity to the portal is available, then this measure will report the value Success. If the connectivity is unavailable, then this measure will report the value Failed.

The numeric values that correspond to these measure values are as follows:

Measure Value	Numeric Value
Success	1
Failed	0

Note:

By default, this measure reports the Measure Values listed in the table above to indicate whether/not the portal is accessible. In the graph of this measure however, the same is indicated using the numeric equivalents only.

Time taken to connect

Indicates the average time taken to connect to the portal.

Seconds

An abnormally high value is a cause for concern, as it indicates that it is taking too long to connect to the portal over HTTP/S. To ensure a high quality experience for Office 365 users, you need to investigate why connectivity is slow and fix it.