Introduction
The purpose of this article is to help Office 365 Administrators navigate the most common tasks they will encounter in an Exchange hybrid environment. There are three main administrative centers to be aware of – Office 365 Admin Portal, Exchange Online Admin Center and the Exchange On-Premises management console. A summary describing when and why to use each of these is outlined below.
Office 365 Admin Portal
When to use the Office 365 Admin Portal: "Anytime you need to allocate/deallocate licensing, assigning roles to users or create cloud only users."
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Licensing
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User role assignment
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Creation of cloud only users
Exchange Online
When to use the Exchange Online Admin Center: “Anytime you need to change permissions or organization-wide configuration settings.”
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Create/change transport rules.
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Run message trace.
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Convert mailboxes from user to shared and vice versa.
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Set full access/send as permissions.
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Adjust spam filter settings.
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Set litigation hold.
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Set DLP.
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Set retention policies/tags.
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Configure receive/send connectors.
Exchange On-Premises
When to use on-premises Exchange Admin Center: “Anytime you need to change or update a mail-related attribute for a user object (because these changes get synced to the cloud).”
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Create new/delete mail enabled users
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Change logon name
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Change display name
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Change/add/remove email address
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Enable archive mailboxes
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Create new/delete distribution lists
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Add/remove group membership from distribution lists
Conclusion
In a hybrid deployment the on-premises environment is the source of authority. Changes made to syncing objects on-premises will sync up to the cloud.