Interface concepts · Administration

The administration interfaces

Office Unbound is designed to keep everyday applications and administration apart. Four consoles are proposed, each for a different person: an organization’s administrator, a managed service provider, an infrastructure operator, and whoever runs a migration.

Project status Proposed interface concepts, not released software. Every screen uses fictional example data.

Organization administration

For an organization’s own IT administrator: a familiar admin center, branded Office Unbound, for one organization.

Users, groups and MFA
Service provisioning and storage
Mail settings, domains and DNS
Permissions and security policies
Audit logs
Organization-level updates

Concept of the Office Unbound admin home for Northfield Accounting, managed by Ridgeline IT, marked as example data, in the admin console with its left navigation for overview, users, groups, domains, mail, storage, service health, security, roles, updates, migration, audit log and settings. A summary strip shows 48 users with 46 active and 2 suspended, 11 groups, 46 of 48 people enrolled in MFA with 2 without it, 3 shared mailboxes, 612 GB of 1 TB storage used and 2 open alerts. A Needs attention list, each item with an action button, reads: 2 people without MFA; DKIM pending for the alias domain northfield-cpa.example with DMARC missing; a mail forwarding rule to an outside address; Sam Ortega at 89% of his 50 GB files quota; and Document editor 2.9.0 needing approval, followed by organization setup at 7 of 9 steps. Recent admin activity lists six timed entries, including an automatic account lock, a mail flow rule change and an MFA reset by Rosa Valdez of Ridgeline IT, and a password reset by Tom Haddad. Messages from Ridgeline IT, the provider, include Mail service 1.14.3 scheduled for Saturday 21 November at 02:00 with a Request deferral button, a feature update awaiting approval, a policy change requiring security keys for admins from 1 December, and a resolved calendar sync incident. Quick actions offer Add user, Reset password, Add group, Reset MFA, Shared mailbox and Import users. Service health shows mail, calendar, files, chat and sign-in operational, document editing degraded since 09:40 and calls not set up. Storage breaks the 612 GB into personal files, team libraries, mailboxes and chat recordings, notes growth of 14 GB in 30 days, and lists the accounts nearest their quota. There are no license-assignment panels. — Proposed interface concept — not released Where an organization administrator starts View full size

More Organization administration screens

Administration One console for the organization
Groups and permissions Groups, owners and administrative roles
Tenant administration One customer organization, end to end
Mail settings Mail settings, with modern authentication by default
Security policies MFA, access and sessions in one place
Audit log Who did what, including the provider
Organization updates Updates the organization can see and schedule
Document engine settings Choosing the editing engine

MSP Control Center

For managed service providers: a separate console for many customer organizations, each its own isolated tenant.

Tenant status and customer isolation
New-customer provisioning
Technician roles and delegated access
Service assignments
Maintenance scheduling and alerts
Reporting and migration progress

Concept of the Office Unbound MSP Control Center, marked as example data: a table of eight customer organizations, each a separate tenant, with users, active modules, service status, storage used against quota, migration status, security alerts and update status; a tenant isolation indicator; an Actions button; the technician’s permission scope; a maintenance schedule; an alerts panel; and a platform capacity card for compute, memory and storage with a rule for when to add a host. — Proposed interface concept — not released Many customers, kept apart View full size

More MSP Control Center screens

Customer detail One customer, from the provider’s side
New tenant Provisioning a customer in eight steps
Delegated access Technicians see only what their role allows
Maintenance scheduling Maintenance across every customer
Maintenance and updates Updates on each customer’s schedule
Customer reporting A monthly report a customer can read
Administration on a phone The urgent tasks, on a phone

Infrastructure Control Server

For infrastructure operators: the control plane for hosts, VMs, containers and services, separate from sign-in and from tenant administration.

Proxmox clusters, hosts and managed VMs
Docker containers and service health
CPU, memory, storage and network
Alerts, incidents and escalation
Update control and recovery
Capacity forecasts and approval-gated scaling

Concept of the Office Unbound Infrastructure Control overview, marked as example data, in its own console with an environment switcher set to Ridgeline IT Production (one of four environments) and its own navigation: Overview, Hypervisors, Containers, Services, Monitoring, Alerts, Updates, Capacity, Recovery, Audit log and Settings, with the controller ics-01 healthy and a standby ready. A summary row shows 5 hosts in 2 Proxmox VE clusters, 24 managed virtual machines with 14 others not in scope, 142 containers with 139 healthy, 29 of 31 services healthy, 4 warnings and 1 acknowledged critical alert. Utilization meters show CPU 38%, memory 67%, storage on cluster A 52% and cluster B 71% against an 85% alert, and network 12%. A host table lists CPU and memory for the five hosts, one with disk latency. Recent incidents include a critical outbound mail relay failure, a storage latency warning and an automatically recovered identity restart. A capacity forecast says storage cluster B is projected to reach 85% in about 7 to 10 weeks at current growth, as an estimate, and that cluster A cannot absorb the loss of one host’s memory. Upcoming maintenance lists a document engine canary, rolling host packages and a mail security fix awaiting approval, and service health lists ten areas from mail to backups. — Proposed interface concept — not released The deployment at a glance View full size

More Infrastructure Control Server screens

Hypervisor management Powerful control, limited privileges
Monitoring Health checks that test the service, not just the process
Alert center From detection to acknowledgment
Update management Platform updates on the operator’s schedule
Capacity planner Tomorrow’s capacity problems, today

Migration Center

For migration projects: guided moves from Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, run by the organization or its MSP.

Discovery and pre-migration assessment
Supported and unsupported workloads
Identity mapping and migration waves
Progress and verification
Cutover approvals
Rollback planning

Concept of the Office Unbound Migration Center assessment screen, marked as example data: Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace source tabs, a read-only connected tenant, discovered users, groups, shared mailboxes, mailbox, OneDrive and SharePoint volumes, Teams, calendars and contacts; readiness per workload with an estimated complexity of low, medium or high and the reason, noted as not a duration; a compatibility table sorting items into migrates directly, needs conversion, needs validation and not supported; blocking issues; four proposed migration waves; an estimated target infrastructure; and an Export report button. — Proposed interface concept — not released Know what moves before anything moves View full size

More Migration Center screens

Google Workspace assessment Discovering a Google Workspace domain
Mapping and waves Mapping identities and planning waves
Migration · in progress Staged migration with a way back
Verification and cutover Verify, cut over, and know how to roll back

Why four consoles, not one

Each console serves a different person with different authority. An organization administrator manages people and policies in one organization. An MSP works across many customers but only within the scope each technician is given. The Infrastructure Control Server manages hypervisors and containers with narrowly scoped credentials that tenant administrators never hold. Sign-in and identity sit underneath all of them.

Four systems, kept separate

The everyday workspace

Administration is reached from the app switcher, never from the everyday navigation. People who only use mail, files and meetings do not see it.

Everyday workspace concepts

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MSP design partners review these consoles against how they work today, before anything is built.

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