Signing up for Microsoft 365

As we just mentioned, you need a Microsoft 365 business subscription in order to sign up for Windows 365. The easiest way to get up and running is to use your existing Microsoft 365 business subscription. If you don’t already have a subscription, you can sign up for a free trial. Here’s how:

1. Open the web browser on your computer and go to https://www.office.com/.

   The Office Home page appears, as shown in Figure 3-1.

2. Click the Get Office button.

   To get Windows 365, you need to use a business plan subscription. We expect that at some point in the future Microsoft will release a consumer version of Windows 365, but for now it is available only for Microsoft 365 business subscriptions. If you really want to use Windows 365 for home use, however, nothing is stopping you from signing yourself up for a business subscription. We have plenty of friends who run their households better than others run their businesses.

3. Click the For Business tab to see the available business plans.

   In the table that appears, you will see the Microsoft 365 business plans. We will choose the Business Standard plan (see Figure 3-2) because it comes with Office client applications such as Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint. You can either choose the same plan as we did or you can choose another plan that better fits your circumstances. The Business Standard plan also comes with collaboration tools such as Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive. We plan to use the Office clients (see Chapter 10) and the collaboration tools (see Chapter 11) on our cloud PC, so we want to be sure they are included in our subscription.

4. Get a free trial by clicking the Try for Free for 1 Month link just below the Buy Now button.

   A welcome screen appears that asks for your information.

5. Walk through the wizard, providing your information as needed, in order to set up your Microsoft 365 business subscription.

After you complete the process, it takes a few minutes to create your Microsoft 365 subscription. When it is done, your free trial will be created, as shown in Figure 3-3. Click the button that says Get Started to sign in to your Microsoft 365 dashboard.

Microsoft 365 walks you through the additional setup items. However, for our purposes, we just want to get to Windows 365, so we click the link to exit setup and get to our Microsoft 365 dashboard, as shown in Figure 3-4.

You can always get back to your Microsoft 365 dashboard by navigating your web browser to https://admin.microsoft.com and signing in with your admin account. Your admin account is the account that was set up when you first signed up for Microsoft 365. It ends with the domain .onmicrosoft.com. In Figure 3-3, our admin account is [email protected].

Signing up for Windows 365

Now that you have Microsoft 365, you can add Windows 365 to your subscription. When you sign up for Windows 365, you can choose between a Business subscription and an Enterprise subscription. The best way to think of these is to think of two different types of businesses: The first type of business is a small business that buys their computers at their local computer store and then sets everything up themselves. The second type of business is a large enterprise that has a dedicated IT team. The second business gets their computers from some direct supplier and tightly controls and manages the setup using automation and strict governance controls.

The Windows 365 Business subscription is suitable for the first type of business and the Enterprise subscription is suitable for the second type of business. In this chapter, we get set up using the Windows 365 Business subscription because it is straightforward and designed for small business. We cover the Enterprise subscription features later in Chapters 15, 16, and 17.

To sign up for Windows 365:

1. Navigate to www.windows365.com in your web browser.

   The Windows 365 Cloud PC Home page appears, as shown in Figure 3-5.

2. Click the Windows 365 Business button.

   To get Windows 365, you will need to use a Microsoft 365 business plan subscription. If you are following along, you set this up previously in the chapter. If you are using an existing Microsoft 365 subscription then you need to verify it is a business plan.

3. Click the Compare Plans and Pricing button.

   In the table that appears, you can view the different specifications for the cloud PC you want to add, as shown in Figure 3-6. We cover the various cloud PC specification options further in Chapter 17. For our purposes, we just want a basic cloud PC for now. It includes 2 virtual CPUs, 4GB of memory, and 128GB of storage.

4. Select the Basic option and click the Buy Now button.

   A screen appears that lets you know you can save money if you will be using Windows 10 Pro or Windows 11 Pro on the physical device you will be using to access your cloud PC. They call this the Windows Hybrid Benefit. The idea being that if you use Windows locally, and are the primary user of the device and using it regularly, then you are paying a license for that Windows too. On the other hand, if you only use Macs then you don’t qualify for the benefit. The benefit is designed to help you reduce the cost of Windows 365 licensing. Select whichever option is relevant for you.

5. On the next screen, you sign up for Windows 365. In the email address field, be sure to use the email address you set up for your Microsoft 365 business subscription.

   Earlier in this chapter, when we signed up for Microsoft 365, we used the email address [email protected], so we enter it here into the form.

6. Continue filling out the form and then click the Place Order button to complete your order.

   A screen appears letting you know the order went through and that you have been sent a welcome email. Check your inbox to find details on next steps and getting started, as shown in Figure 3-7.

Assigning yourself a license to your new cloud PC

When you signed up for Windows 365 in the previous step, you received a welcome email. (Refer to Figure 3-7.) The welcome email includes a Get Started button that automatically directs your web browser to the Windows 365 section of your Microsoft 365 administration center.

In that section, you can assign yourself the new license you just purchased by clicking the Assign License link and then clicking Assign License again to display the user search tool, as shown in Figure 3-8. If you are following along, then you will only have one user so that user shouldn’t be hard to find. Select your user and then click the Assign button.

Congratulations! You have successfully signed up for Microsoft 365, Windows 365, and assigned yourself a license. The next step is finding the Windows 365 administration center, signing into your new system, and taking a look around.

You can always get back to your Microsoft 365 dashboard by opening your web browser and going to https://www.office.com/ and signing in with the user you created.