Forum Discussion
Project Operations subcontractor licensing
1. Creating subcontractors as users (and the respective bookable resource) - subcons will have an AD/ guest M365 account and assign subcon users project ops team member licenses.
Correct, pg.37 of the D365 LG confirms that the Team Members license permits the ability to record time, materials, and expenses. This may be the best solution for this scenario in my opinion.
2. Creating subcontractors as Contacts (and the respective bookable resource) under a vendor account - subcons will need to submit time and expenses via a Power Pages portal. The Time and Expenses tables will need to be surfaced on the portal. We will need to license Power Pages login and page view capacity.
Per pg.42 the D365 LG, you have the option to license Power Pages to provide external access to your business processes or data, so the Power Pages license should be sufficient. However, since your scenario is a bit technical & specific, I've reached out to Power Platform SMEs to confirm.
If I find that you'll need additional or a different license, I'll update this post. (If I do not update this post, then the Power Pages license is sufficient).
If this reply answers your question, please Accept as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly. Otherwise, please let me know if you need further assistance on this topic.
Regards,Microsoft CSP Licensing Concierge
1. Creating subcontractors as users (and the respective bookable resource) - subcons will have an AD/ guest M365 account and assign subcon users project ops team member licenses.
Correct, pg.37 of the D365 LG confirms that the Team Members license permits the ability to record time, materials, and expenses. This may be the best solution for this scenario in my opinion.
2. Creating subcontractors as Contacts (and the respective bookable resource) under a vendor account - subcons will need to submit time and expenses via a Power Pages portal. The Time and Expenses tables will need to be surfaced on the portal. We will need to license Power Pages login and page view capacity.
Per pg.42 the D365 LG, you have the option to license Power Pages to provide external access to your business processes or data, so the Power Pages license should be sufficient. However, since your scenario is a bit technical & specific, I've reached out to Power Platform SMEs to confirm.
If I find that you'll need additional or a different license, I'll update this post. (If I do not update this post, then the Power Pages license is sufficient).
If this reply answers your question, please Accept as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly. Otherwise, please let me know if you need further assistance on this topic.
Regards,
Microsoft CSP Licensing Concierge
Just wanted to provide an update to this post (for completeness):
While creating subcontractors as contacts (as per option 2) was a valid scenario, the subcontractors would still require a ProjOps team member license. This is because of the 'Licensing requirements for external users' section on Pg 42 (Aug 2023) of the guide:
"External user access does not extend to your employees, onsite or independent contractors, vendors, agents, or those of your affiliates who are providing business processes on behalf of you or your affiliate. Those users are considered internal users"
It's a bit vague in this area as contractor usually is not treated as an employee by the company, but does execute processes/ provide services on behalf of the company.
Also, while you would purchase the license, I'm not sure how you would assign them to the user?
Finally, Project Ops team member + Power Pages view and login capacity makes this option financial unviable.
We ended up going down the guest account route 🙂
Thank you for the follow up! I'll definitely point out your update should someone else have a similar scenario.
Have a great week!
Regards,
Microsoft CSP Licensing Concierge