Assigning a license removes other licenses

[alar50]

I encountered a strange behavor of Microsoft Admin Center. I am pretty sure, it used to work differently before, however MS365 support responded, that this is exactly as it should be.

In short - when assigning a license in MS365 admin center Billing->Licenses section, then all other licenses the user has assigned, are removed.

Full description - Admin Center -> Billing -> Licenses -> [select some license] -> Assign -> [selected some user name] -> Assign" causes all other licenses to be removed from the user. E.g. user "License Test" had MS365 Basic and Power Automate Free and Teams Exploratory licenses assigned. When navigating to licenses, selecting Project Online Essentials license and assigning 1 available license to the User "License Test", the result is that the User "License Test" has now ONLY Project license. All other licenses were released.

Original license list for the User:

Original license list for the User

Assigning a new license to the User

Assigning another license

New license assigned

Another license assigned

Result of assigning a license - all other licenses are released

Result of assigning license - other licenses released

How come this is a feature, not a bug. There is even no warning, that adding a license this way would result releasing all the other licenses. I am also pretty sure, I have used the exact same procedure to assign a new license before without issues.

Nevertheless, MS365 support responded that this is exactly as it should be. Any ideas?

[#2]

Feature my... behinds. They had a similar issue few years back, support is clueless as usual. I'm able to reproduce this, and it's definitely a bug, and major one at that (can cause data loss).

@Nino Bilic for awareness. @Tony Redmond to give them a piece of his mind...

[#3]

I bet I know why this happens. Behind the scenes, they're probably doing a license assignment using the Graph API which doesn't take into account the other existing licenses, meaning that when the new assignment takes effect, it overwrites everything else. Geez,.. what a horrible bug.

[#4]

I pinged someone who might be able to help fix the problem.

[#5]

Thanks for the tag, Vasil... reached out to people who will be able to fix it...

[#6 · Accepted solution]

This should not reproduce anymore since Friday (when the issue was fixed). Can you please check again?

[#7]

For the record, I still can.

[#8]

@Nino Bilic - all good on my side now! Thank you all! I wish I could ask the support guy, how come the behavior that was considered correct, is now again changed...