Forum Discussion
Licensing a Dataverse environment for external users
I would agree on your notion, that no Power Apps / D365 license is required.
The Power Apps / D365 licenses are only needed for using the Power/D365 services. But since the users don't use the service and only consume Dataverse capacity. Licensing the Dataverse capacity should be sufficient in this case.
I agree, no user license is required here.
What do you mean by "licensing the Dataverse capacity" - does that just mean licensing for sufficient storage capacity to hold the data? I was recently told by a MS rep: "There is no free external user allowance for Dataverse when using custom apps. Since the external users are using custom IIS apps that connect to Dataverse, they fall under Power Apps licensing." I would tend to agree with your comment, but this MS rep seems to be saying the opposite.
[..] does that just mean licensing for sufficient storage capacity to hold the data?
To my knowledge, yes. As the users are not using any other Microsoft service (eg. Power Apps) besides Dataverse.
"There is no free external user allowance for Dataverse when using custom apps. Since the external users are using custom IIS apps that connect to Dataverse, they fall under Power Apps licensing."
That's an interesting comment, which I never heard before. This is also not listed as such in the Licensing Guide. It suggest to get the MS rep to provide official statement on the matter. It would not be the first time that MS reps provide incorrect licensing advice though :P
Thanks for the reply. It turned out to be some confusion and misunderstanding by the MS rep - they've now confirmed that no licensing is needed for external users of a custom IIS web app that interfaces with Dataverse via API.