Forum Discussion
Licenses
Does anyone know where we can find a complete and comprehensive list of the various O365 Licenses? New ones seem to keep popping up and frequently I can't find the official documentation that describes their purpose and appropriate usage.
Here you go :) Look a my InfoGraphic
- I echo Cary's and Juan's comment, as a "MS Licensing Solution Provider" there are days I just want to through my hands up in frustration. Calling the partner hotline, only confuses the issue with various recommendations/suggestions. It's quite easier for my just to contact my distributor and ask them.
- Brian Levenson
Microsoft
Dean_Gross, are you referring to licenses as in offerings or the toggles available in the Admin Center?
From an offering perspective, I reference this site:
https://products.office.com/en-us/business/compare-more-office-365-for-business-plans
I suspect you're interested in the licenses as they appear in the Admin Center, which is a bit more around provisioning on a per user basis. Within Microsoft, we also frequently confuse license with SKU, and there are a tremendous number of SKUs for things like adding Adv Threat Protection to E3.
Would it be correct to rephrase the question this way: "Is there a list of all the Office 365 services as defined by license toggles in the Admin Center?"
I am refering to the toggles. I fully understand that SKU's are different than Licenses, which is why I am asking this question. SKUs are for accounting/billing purposes, Licenses are where the real authorization to use a service is provided.
your rephrasing of my question is correct.
- Brian Levenson
Thanks, Dean! I'm not aware of any documentation on those toggles. I am working on some release and change management topics that are related, so I'll make sure to raise it as an opportunity in that context.
What is your ideal documentation? I'm envisioning a page that lists each of the toggles, what it does, the implications of disabling a service, and best practices for managing the licenses via powershell.
Do you have any specific questions we could answer here?
CC: Anne Michels and Tom Batcheler
Why is it so hard for Microsoft to provide us, your customers, with a list of the SKUs that are available in the Office365 world?
I don't care if it thousands of lines long, you should be able to have that information readily available. I should be able to look at such a list and go to my account rep, and say "we want 50 SKU XYZ123s, how much will that be for us."
It would be emensly more useful if they also indicated which were available only for Government, Education, Europe, Asia, etc.
Many times I've had to go to my Account Rep and say we need an Exchange Only license. Then several weeks are wasted because they have to find it themselves, and then often there are several SKUs that have to be figured out which one we are after.
All in all very difficult way of trying to buy YOUR product.
Normaly I use this site - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office-365-plan-options.aspx
And you have here the recent changes - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt761735.aspx
Thanks, I'm familiar with those pages, what I am really after are the details about what happens when a specific license is assigned to a user, i.e. a specific license is needed in order for a specific feature to be enabled for a user to perform a task. Some of it is obvious, but some time it is not, Some licenses are enforced, some are not
For example, one of my clients tenants shows "Microsoft PowerApps and Logic flows" (subcategories include Microsoft Power Video Basic, Logic Flows, Microsoft Power Apps) and "Microsoft Power Apps & Flow" (subcategories are PowerApps Trial and Flow Free). Attempting to do a search on these phrases has been unhelpful.
Poorly documented things like this force me and many other consultants to spend a lot of time doing research so that we can try to answer simple questions from our clients. Unfortunately, my research frequently does not find reliable answers, and I'm forced to tell the client that MS has not provided any documentation and that we will just have to do some trial-and-error testing to see what happens. If I'm on a T&M contract, this costs my client money that they would have preferred to spend on something more valuable.Hi Dean,
I agree with you. Many time we have to spent sometime to find the information.
In past years there where a file that you can find all, but is not updated since 2014 - https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Office-365-service-da635c9b but you have another file but is not oficial with the data somehow updated https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?cid=41e528b989881d4a&id=documents&resid=41E528B989881D4A!194&app=Excel&authkey=!AJTaHXrAwKrOd68&
Can't tell you how long it takes for our Account Rep to find out what SKUs there are and which ones we are eligible for when we talk about purchases. It sure would be nice to have a rough idea BEFORE talking to them.
- +1 for this request!
