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Azure AD group-based license management for Office 365 and more
This looks awesome - simplify licence management for Office 365, EMS, Dynamics 365 and more with the new group-based licensing preview in Azure AD:
Microsoft cloud services such as Office 365, Enterprise Mobility + Security, Dynamics CRM, and other similar products require licenses to be assigned to each user who needs access to these services. Until now, licenses could only be assigned at individual user level, which can male large-scale management difficult for our customers.
We have introduced a new capability of the Azure AD license management system: group-based licensing. It is now possible to assign one or more product licenses to a group. Azure AD will make sure that the licenses are assigned to all members of the group. Any new members joining the group will be assigned the appropriate licenses and when they leave the group those licenses will be removed. This eliminates the need for automating license management via PowerShell to reflect changes in the organization and departmental structure on a per-user basis.
Here is the documentation with the steps to get started - What is group-based licensing in Azure Active Directory?
Group-based licensing will be a feature of all the paid Azure AD editions. (And it is included now during the public preview period)
That means Azure AD Basic, Azure AD Premium P1 and P2 and of course EMS E3 and E5 that includes Azure AD Premium.
Also will be a feature of Office 365 E3 and Office 365 E5 when it becomes generally avaialble.
Now, for EDU organizations things are rather simple becasue Azure AD Basic is free for them so by adding the free Azure AD Basic edition to their tenant they can use Group-Based Licensing for all the related products.
I hope this helps
Nasos
We found that the “Azure AD group-based license management” (in public preview) is not currently smart enough to recognize a single user license between E3 and E5. It “double dips”, so a user who has an E5 license (direct or inherited) and an E3 license (direct or inherited) takes up two license; one E3 and one E5. This scenario did not create any warning or alert from the system. Is there a UserVoice style area to communicate with folks evaluating what will be GA?
The problem here isn't the AD Group based implementation. it honours whatever licensing rules are applied by the platform. Therefore if you can apply the two license templates in the Office 365 UI, then you can do the same in the Group Based templates.
In this instance, it's a viable solution to apply elements from both E3 and E5 to a single user (Note I said viable.. not sensible!). You'll find that you can tick both E3 and E5 in the Office 365 UI. If you tried to do the same using and F1 and E3 or F1 and E5 it would throw an error in the UI and also in the Group Based licensing interfaces.
Paul Hunt - Cimares I like your quantifier "(Note I said viable.. not sensible!)"
The problem, of course is, if a thing is not sensible, someone will still try to do it at the expense of others around them.
I do understand what you are saying though.
We - large scale corporate implementation - will need a reasonable way of reporting on it or preventing it.
Pulling the data per user per license per service down from the tenant via PowerShell then republishing it via PowerBI is also viable but not sensible. ;)
My tests of the group-based license management is going well. Its value is clear especially given Microsoft's gross propensity to force service plans out as "Enabled by default". (another viable not sensible example)
Deleted, here's where you could add in to Azure AD ideas on UserVoice: https://feedback.azure.com/forums/169401-azure-active-directory
There's some Group Based Licensing requests in there already.
When is this going GA?
Hello,
as I understand it is still in public preview. So my question, do you have a timeline when group-based license management will be GA? And how quick will it be available (GA) in the German Cloud?
Regards Thomas
We have just changed our licensing to Office 365 E3 to Office 365 E5.
And Kiosk to F1 licensing is there any reason not to use group based licensing?
This would help flip all my users properly and also remove the services that we didn't want to go live quite yet.
- I'm keen to understand when this is going GA as well.
Is it also possible to get an export from for example all the users with the E3 license?
- So I have set up a few AD groups that we will use to apply the licenses.
I have also set up a powershell script set up that will clear membership of those groups and refresh them every hour or so to account for changes (new users, changed situations, etc).
If I am clearing those groups out and replacing all the users frequently, is there anything to be concerned with from the group-based licensing process perspective? Or other gotchas?
Or would this be a pretty low risk process (given the code is built to properly populate the groups)?- BrjannBrekkan
Microsoft
Not a good idea as when you clear the membership GBL will trigger a remove of the license and then you would have to re-apply them and hope that your timing matches that of GBL updating the assignments in Office for example. You will likely get some very unpredictable results if you keep running this on your groups.
I understand that you are doing this as a simple version of dynamic groups which is an Azure AD Premium feature but you have to change the logic to not remove member unless he/she is really removed.
Brjann
- That's disappointing, will have to experiment with how to handle delta changes to achieve same goal :(
Greetings all,
My question is specifically in regards to end user licensing in the Education Sector, which is needed to use Azure AD Group Based Licensing.
Going by Source 1, all users who inherit a license via the group based licensing model will need an Azure AD Basic license (not Azure AD Free).
Going by Source 2, this will change once the functionality reaches GA.
Once this happens, "it will be included in Office 365 Enterprise E3 and similar products."
As Education licensing differs from the standard Enterprise E3, will this functionality be included at no cost for Student and Alumni licensing?
As you can imagine, a large University will have hundreds of thousands of Alumni and tens of thousands of Students. Having Education E3 include the Azure AD Basic licensing / eligibility for Azure AD Group based licensing for $0 will help for Staff, but if Azure AD Basic licensing is not included for Alumni and Students, the Education sector will not be able to afford to use this awesome functionality.
Can someone please provide clarity, and preferably a link to a valid Microsoft site, on how Azure AD Group Based Licensing and Azure AD Basic will apply to Staff, Students and Alumni.Source 1 -
- Link - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/active-directory-licensing-whatis-azure-portal
- Features –
- During public preview, a paid or trial subscription for Azure AD basic or premium editions is required in the tenant to use group-based license management. Also, every user who inherits any licenses from groups must have the paid Azure AD edition license assigned to them.
Source 2 -
- Link - https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2017/02/22/announcing-the-public-preview-of-azure-ad-group-based-license-management-for-office-365-and-more/
It contains the following statement:
"While group-based license management is in public preview you will need an active subscription for Azure AD Basic (or above) in your tenant to assign licenses to groups. If you don’t have one, just sign up for an Enterprise Mobility + Security trial. Later, when this functionality becomes generally available it will be included in Office 365 Enterprise E3 and similar products."
- Nasos_Kladakis
Group-based licensing will be a feature of all the paid Azure AD editions. (And it is included now during the public preview period)
That means Azure AD Basic, Azure AD Premium P1 and P2 and of course EMS E3 and E5 that includes Azure AD Premium.
Also will be a feature of Office 365 E3 and Office 365 E5 when it becomes generally avaialble.
Now, for EDU organizations things are rather simple becasue Azure AD Basic is free for them so by adding the free Azure AD Basic edition to their tenant they can use Group-Based Licensing for all the related products.
I hope this helps
Nasos
So does this mean all O365 Business related Plans (I am using Business Essentials and Business Premium) will qualify for the use of group based licensing?
- As it relates to Education, I know that we just purchased an EES agreement, and in so doing we were able to add the SKU 965-00002 for Azure Basic (AADB) for $0 to get this...but this does require an active EES agreement to add AADB for free. I just got this and it hasn't been applied to my portal yet, but I've been assured by Microsoft that is all you need to switch from user-based processing using Azure powershell scripts to using groups in Azure.
- As a follow-up since I was able to test this last night, Azure Basic ($0 if you have an EES, even though I don't have E3, just the regular faculty/student O365) does allow you to use Groups to assign Azure rights for applications. However, Azure Basic does not let you use dynamic groups. For example, I have a dynamic email group called "All Staff", but that group is not available to Azure when assigning application rights, because you need an Azure Premium, not Basic, license for dynamic groups. That means that I had to create a new "AllStaffAzure" group in O365 portal (I chose to hide that group since I'm only using it for assigning Azure rights) and I used Powershell to assign all staff accounts into that group, then I could set the Application in Azure (like Google Apps, EasyBib, etc.) to use that "AllStaffAzure" group, instead of having to assign each person individually. So it's still not as dynamic as I'd like, but it's easier for me to use Powershell to script users into an O365/Exchange group than Azure.
So this is super exciting, tested it out, works amazingly.
Two questions:
(1) Even though it is considered "public preview", any reason that we should not consider taking advantage of this immediately?(2) What is the best way to bulk remove "direct" licenses from users? Just use PowerShell, or is there something new in the UI I have overlooked.Scratch question 2, Adam Fowler's link covers it perfectly!
- Nasos_Kladakis
Brent
Public preview means a number of things. But most of all means no SLA.
I really want to tell you to go and use it because it seems to work perfectly :) However this is what public preview is all about:
Test the feature, get feedback from as many users as possible and then call it Generally available.
Nasos
This went down very well at a SharePoint Saturday demo I did in Munich last week. People are clamouring for this and it might stop people using Okta and similar third parties!
If anyone wants to see it in action, I put together a short video showing it in use. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih0XN0eRWwA
Fantastic piece of work . Has saved us hours/ days of effort.
Already deployed this, works great!
Did a quick writeup too :) https://www.adamfowlerit.com/2017/02/azure-ad-group-based-license-management-office-365/- Nasos_Kladakis
We are so glad that you think this is awesome ! (We agree)
