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	Certificate-based authentication (CBA) enables customers to allow or require users to authenticate with X.509 certificates against their Azure Entra ID for applications and browser sign-in. When monitoring highly secure Office 365 environments, you should 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. To achieve this, you should do the following: Enable Azure Entra ID 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 For Monitoring Microsoft Office 365 Environments. 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.
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.
Graph Client ID, Graph Client Secret	This test pulls metrics by accessing the Microsoft Graph API. Therefore, for this test to run, the Microsoft Graph App should first be registered on Microsoft Entra ID, with a specific set of permissions. To know what these permissions are and which tests require these permissions, refer to eG Tests Requiring Microsoft Graph App Permissions. This App can be created manually or using the proprietary PowerShell script that eG Enterprise provides. For the manual procedure, refer to Registering the Microsoft Graph App On Microsoft Entra ID. To use the PowerShell script, refer to Automatically Fulfilling Pre-requisites For Monitoring Microsoft Office 365 Environments. To allow this test access to Microsoft Graph App, you need to configure the test with the Graph Client ID and Graph Client Secret of the registered application. The Client ID is a unique identifier for your application, while the Client Secret is a confidential string used to verify your application's identity to access protected resources. If you have manually registered the app in Microsoft Entra ID, then steps 5 and 6 of the procedure detailed in the Registering the Microsoft Graph App On Microsoft Entra ID topic will lead you to the Client ID and Client Secret of the app. Make a note of these details and use them to configure the Graph Client ID and Graph Client Secret parameters, respectively. On the other hand, if you have used eG's proprietary pre-requisites script to automatically create the Microsoft Graph app, then, step 13 of the procedure detailed in the Automatically Fulfilling Pre-requisites For Monitoring Microsoft Office 365 Environments topic will provide you with the Client ID and Client Secret of the graph app. Make a note and configure the Graph Client ID and Graph Client Secret parameters accordingly.

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.