Your first week in a new job comes with a lot of small questions. Where do I sign in? Where does this file go? How do I see the team’s calendar? This checklist walks you through Microsoft 365 onboarding for employees day by day, so you can find your way around sign-in, files, mail and calendar, and know where to go when something does not work.
Work through it in order if you like, or jump to the part you need right now.
Day 1: sign in and set up your account
Start with your work account. Your IT team gives you an email address and a first password, usually on your first morning.
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Go to the Microsoft 365 sign-in page or open the app your organisation points you to.
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Enter your work email address and the password you received.
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Set a new password if you are asked to.
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Set up multi-factor authentication. You confirm your sign-in with a second step, most often a code or a notification on your phone. Keep that phone nearby; you will need it again when you sign in on a new device.
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Sign in once on your laptop and once on your phone. Doing both on day one saves you a puzzle later in the week.
One small habit that pays off: check which account you are signed in with before you share anything. Personal and work accounts look alike, and files saved in the wrong one are hard to find back.
Day 2: find and save your files
Microsoft 365 gives you two places to store documents, and the difference matters.
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OneDrive is your own space. Drafts, notes, anything that is yours until you decide to share it.
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SharePoint and Teams hold your team’s files. A document that belongs to a project or a department lives here, where colleagues can open it without you sending anything.
So when you make something new, ask one question: is this mine, or is this ours? That answer picks the location.
A few things to try this week:
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Open OneDrive and save one document there. Notice that it saves while you type, so there is no separate save moment.
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Open the Teams channel for your team and look under the Files tab. That is your team’s SharePoint library.
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Use the search bar at the top of any Microsoft 365 app to look for a document by name or by a word inside it. Searching is usually faster than clicking through folders.
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Share a file by using the Share button and pasting a link, instead of attaching a copy. Everyone then works in the same version.
Day 3: mail and calendar basics
Outlook holds your mail, your calendar and your contacts in one place. You do not need every feature in week one. These are the ones you will use daily.
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Set your signature once, in Outlook’s settings, so it appears on every message.
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Make two or three folders and move mail you have handled out of your inbox. An inbox you can see the bottom of is easier to trust.
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Use the search bar rather than scrolling. Search by sender, by subject or by a word in the message.
Calendar
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Open your calendar and check what is already booked for your first weeks.
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When you schedule a meeting, add the people and use Scheduling Assistant to see when everyone is free.
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Turn on a meeting link if the meeting is online, so remote colleagues can join.
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Block time for focused work. A calendar entry tells colleagues you are busy, even when the entry is just for you.
Set your working hours and time zone in the calendar settings. Colleagues then see the right availability when they invite you.
Day 4: get to know Teams
Teams is where most of the day-to-day conversation happens. Chats for quick questions, channels for a project or a department, calls and meetings in the same app.
Start small. Find the channels for your own team, introduce yourself in the general channel, and use chat for the questions that are too small for email. Check your notification settings once too; you can choose which channels you follow closely and which ones you only read when you have time.
Day 5: know where to get help
This is the part most first weeks skip, and it is the one that saves you the most time.
Before you ask, try these in order:
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Search inside the app. The search bar in Microsoft 365 finds commands and settings, not only files.
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Ask a colleague on your team. Someone sitting near you has almost certainly hit the same question in their own first week.
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Check your organisation’s own guidance. Many organisations keep a short internal page for things like printing, VPN access or shared mailboxes.
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Contact your IT helpdesk for anything to do with accounts, passwords, access rights or hardware.
Write down the answers you get. A short personal note of “how we do this here” is worth more in month two than you expect, and it means you ask the same question once.
Your first-week checklist at a glance
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Signed in with my work account on laptop and phone
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Multi-factor authentication set up
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Profile photo and email signature added
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Saved one file in OneDrive and found my team’s files in Teams
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Shared a file with a link instead of an attachment
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Two or three mail folders created
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Working hours and time zone set in the calendar
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Joined the channels for my team
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Know who to contact for an IT question
Nine boxes, and none of them takes long. Tick them off in your first week and the second week starts with the work itself, instead of with the tools.
Frequently asked questions
What should a new employee do first in Microsoft 365?
Sign in with your work account and set up multi-factor authentication. Do it on both your laptop and your phone on day one, then add your profile photo and email signature.
Where do I save my files, OneDrive or Teams?
Use OneDrive for documents that are yours, such as drafts and personal notes. Use your team’s Teams channel or SharePoint site for anything that belongs to a project or a department, so colleagues can reach it without you sending a copy.
How long does Microsoft 365 onboarding take?
The practical set-up, sign-in, files, mail and calendar, fits in a first week alongside your other work. Getting comfortable with the apps you use most takes longer and happens through daily use.
