Office 365 for Small Business in Fiji: A Complete Setup Guide

If your Fijian business is still using a personal Gmail address for professional communication, or sharing files through WhatsApp, Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) is the single most impactful upgrade you can make — and it costs less than most people think.

This guide walks through everything from choosing the right plan to getting email, Teams, and shared drives running for your team.

What is Microsoft 365?

Microsoft 365 is a cloud subscription that gives your business:

• Professional email on your own domain (e.g. yourname@yourbusiness.com.fj)
• Microsoft Teams for internal chat, calls, and video meetings
• SharePoint and OneDrive for shared team file storage and personal cloud drives
• 1TB of cloud storage per user
• Optionally, the full Office suite — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook — installed on up to 5 devices per user

Everything runs in a browser and on any device. No server, no local setup required.

Which plan do you need?

For most small businesses in Fiji, two plans are relevant:

Plan	Price (USD/user/month)	What's included
Microsoft 365 Business Basic	$6.00	Web versions of Office, professional email, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive
Microsoft 365 Business Standard	$12.50	Everything in Basic plus desktop Office apps installed locally (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook)

If your team primarily works in a browser and doesn't need the desktop apps installed, Business Basic is more than sufficient. If staff regularly work offline in Excel or need Outlook as a desktop application, go with Business Standard.

At $6/user/month, a five-person business pays USD $30/month — approximately FJD $67. That's the cost of a tank of petrol.

Step 1: Register a domain name

Microsoft 365 requires a custom domain to use professional email (e.g. yourbusiness.com.fj). If you don't already have one:

• For .com.fj domains: Registration is managed by the University of the South Pacific (USP) IT Services through the FJ Domain Registry Services, which operates the official .fj top-level domain. Contact them at domains.usp.ac.fj or through your local USP campus.
• For .com domains: International registrars like Namecheap, Cloudflare Registrar, or GoDaddy are straightforward and affordable (usually USD $10–12/year).

Once you have a domain, you'll connect it to Microsoft 365 in Step 4.

Step 2: Sign up for Microsoft 365

1. Go to microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/business
2. Select Microsoft 365 Business Basic and click Try free for 1 month
3. Create your global admin account using a temporary Microsoft email (e.g. admin@yourbusiness.onmicrosoft.com) — you'll update this to your real domain later
4. Add payment details — Visa and Mastercard work. Digicel Money and Vodafone M-PAiSA are not directly supported, but you can use a Visa debit card linked to these wallets.

Step 3: Add your team members

Once inside the Microsoft 365 Admin Centre (admin.microsoft.com):

1. Go to Users → Active Users → Add a user
2. Fill in the staff member's name and the email address you want them to have (e.g. sala@yourbusiness.com)
3. Assign them a Microsoft 365 Business Basic licence
4. Set a temporary password — they'll be prompted to change it on first login

Repeat for each staff member. You only pay for the licences you assign.

Step 4: Connect your domain

This step makes email from your real domain work instead of the temporary @onmicrosoft.com address.

1. In the Admin Centre, go to Settings → Domains → Add domain
2. Type your domain name and click Use this domain
3. Microsoft will provide DNS records to add — specifically MX records (for email routing), CNAME records (for Teams and other services), and a TXT record (for domain verification)
4. Log into your domain registrar's control panel and add these records
5. Back in the Admin Centre, click Verify — Microsoft will confirm the records are live

DNS changes can take anywhere from a few minutes to 48 hours to propagate, but it's usually under an hour.

Once verified, emails sent to yourname@yourbusiness.com will arrive directly in Microsoft 365 Outlook.

Step 5: Set up Microsoft Teams

Teams is where your team communicates day-to-day. It replaces group WhatsApps for work conversations, and keeps files, messages, and calls all in one searchable place.

Installation:

• Download Microsoft Teams from the App Store (iOS), Google Play (Android), or teams.microsoft.com for desktop
• Sign in with each user's Microsoft 365 credentials

Setup:

• Create Teams for each department or major project (e.g. Accounts, Operations, Management)
• Within each Team, create Channels for specific topics (e.g. under Operations: #scheduling, #deliveries, #suppliers)
• Use the Files tab in each channel for document collaboration — these files are stored in SharePoint automatically

Video calls with external clients or suppliers work directly from Teams — no download required for the other party if you use the browser link.

Step 6: Set up SharePoint for shared file storage

SharePoint is the shared drive for your entire organisation — accessible from any device, anywhere with internet.

Every Microsoft 365 subscription includes a SharePoint site automatically. To access it:

1. Go to the SharePoint app in the Microsoft 365 app launcher (the nine-dot grid in the top-left of any Microsoft 365 page)
2. Create folder structures that match how your business operates:
   • Finance/ (invoices, receipts, reports)
   • HR/ (contracts, policies, payroll)
   • Operations/ (procedures, schedules, supplier documents)
3. Set permissions on sensitive folders — e.g. only the Finance team and Directors should have access to Finance/
4. Migrate important files from USB drives, local computers, or shared email attachments into SharePoint

Staff can access SharePoint from their phone on a job site, from home, or from any browser. Files are versioned — if someone accidentally overwrites a document, you can restore a previous version.

Step 7: Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (don't skip this)

Business email accounts are the primary target for phishing attacks in the Pacific. Enabling MFA means that even if someone knows a staff member's password, they still can't log in without the staff member's phone.

1. In the Admin Centre, go to Security → Multifactor Authentication
2. Select all users and click Enable
3. On first login after enabling, each user will be prompted to set up their MFA method — the Microsoft Authenticator app is the easiest option

This single step prevents the vast majority of account compromise attempts.

Step 8: Block legacy authentication protocols

Older email protocols (IMAP, POP3, SMTP AUTH) bypass MFA entirely. If you're not using them deliberately, block them:

1. Go to Azure Active Directory → Security → Conditional Access → New Policy
2. Target all users, block legacy authentication clients
3. Save and enable the policy

If a specific device — like a photocopier that sends scanned documents by email — needs legacy auth, you can whitelist it by device.

Common mistakes to avoid

Sharing the admin password with staff. Create individual user accounts for every person. Admin credentials should be held by one person and protected with MFA.

Not migrating existing email history. Years of client communication sitting in old Gmail accounts is valuable. Microsoft provides free tools to migrate from Gmail — use them before you close those accounts.

Skipping the SharePoint setup. It's easy to just use email attachments out of habit. Push the team to use SharePoint from day one — it's much harder to migrate behaviour later than to build the habit from the start.

Ignoring spam filter tuning. Microsoft 365 has strong built-in spam filtering, but important emails from suppliers or clients can occasionally end up in junk. Check the Security & Compliance Centre and review the junk folder during the first two weeks.

What you'll have at the end

After following these steps, your business will have:

• ✅ Professional email on your own domain — no more @gmail.com for business
• ✅ Microsoft Teams for all internal communication and client video calls
• ✅ SharePoint as a shared, cloud-accessible drive for your entire team
• ✅ 1TB OneDrive storage per user for personal work files
• ✅ Multi-Factor Authentication on every account
• ✅ Full access from any device, anywhere in Fiji or internationally

If you'd like this set up for your business by someone who has done it dozens of times across Fijian organisations, get in touch with ArtWiz.