Azure AD Group Based Licensing in Education. Will this apply to Staff, Students and Alumni?

[Terry Munro]

Please note that I have previously posted this as a ‘reply’ to the announcement of the feature

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Azure-Active-Directory/Azure-AD-group-based-license-managemen...

- I apologize if this is some sort of cross posting breach.

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-port...
• 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-a...

• 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."

[#2]

I would also like to know. Looking forward to try out the feature, but if it will be a paid feature for education, I could better invest the time in some scripting for assigning licenses.

[#3]

We're still waiting for an answer on this. We understand, like you, that during GBL public preview only an Azure AD Basic license is needed. But Microsoft pointed out to us that this could change at general availability and an Azure AD Premium license will be required. There's also no word on when public preview will end. We have been assured that GBL is being widely used with no issues and we have been encouraged to start using it. We do not plan to proceed until this licensing question is answered.

[#4]

We have the same question. Would love clarity.