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AAD Group based licensing general availability

Iron Contributor

Anyone know about when the group based licensing feature of AAD will come out of 'preview'. This was announced quite a while ago and we are still waiting for it to go GA before implementing it.

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When it's ready (tm). Keep an eye on the Roadmap and the EMS blog, any announcement will come from there.

What Road Map?

 

How would anyone even know if the product was getting close to ready without a real plan - a road map - of what it is intended to do and how it is intended to do it? 

 

The Azure roadmap doesn't seem to list "Group-based licensing" at all. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/roadmap/?query=Active+Directory  

 

EMS Blog last communication seems to be February 22, 2017 Announcing the public preview of Azure AD group-based license management for Office 365 (and more)! https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2017/02/22/announcing-the-public-preview-of-azur...

 

The docs don't seem to provide any additional (coming soon) guidelines ... and largely have not been updated since June 2017 with the exception of migration examples (02/2018) and PowerShell examples (04/2018).

 

Does Microsoft have a real plan for this product or are they planning to start developing base on Preview adoption and user voice comments? 

What Road Map?

 

How would anyone even know if the product was getting close to ready without a real plan - a road map - of what it is intended to do and how it is intended to do it? 

 

The Azure roadmap doesn't seem to list "Group-based licensing" at all. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/roadmap/?query=Active+Directory  

 

EMS Blog last communication seems to be February 22, 2017 Announcing the public preview of Azure AD group-based license management for Office 365 (and more)! https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2017/02/22/announcing-the-public-preview-of-azur...

 

The docs don't seem to provide any additional (coming soon) guidelines ... and largely have not been updated since June 2017 with the exception of migration examples (02/2018) and PowerShell examples (04/2018).

 

Does Microsoft have a real plan for this product or are they planning to start developing base on Preview adoption and user voice comments? 

Agreed @Deleted, it's difficult to track these things. The Office 365 roadmap is much better with estimated release dates but doesn't necessarily cover Enterprise Mobility features so much. Somethings seems to fall between the cracks as well. Think it's time for a Microsoft 365 roadmap, that brings together all these things under one place.

 

Anyway, @Gurdev Singh unless it's changed since, Azure AD group-based license management GA is expected late summer, which could be towards the end of next month, so something to look out for. I found this here by the way.

Thanks for sharing that link Cian; we wait and see and hopefully Microsoft will release it to GA soon.

Is the minimum licensing requirement an Azure AD Basic subscription for every user within the groups that have licenses assigned, or is it just one single Azure AD Basic license for the tenant?  The description in the article seems ambiguous to me, and a significant difference in cost...

 

A paid or trial subscription for Azure AD Basic or a paid or trial Office 365 Enterprise E3, Office 365 A3 and above editions is required in the tenant to use group-based license management. This feature requires license for each unique user that is a member of groups which are assigned license. You don't have to assign licenses to users for them to be members of groups which are assigned license, but you must have the minimum number of licenses in the tenant to cover all such users. For example, if you had a total of 1,000 unique users in all groups with licenses assigned in your tenant, you would need at least 1,000 licenses to meet the license requirement.

Every users that you are licensing this way need to be covered by a eligible license plan (AAD Basic, O365 E3 +++) 

Thanks for that. Is this following example sufficiently licensed to be able to use the group-based licensing feature for all 300 users?

 

200 x Office 365 F1

100 x Office 365 Enterprise E3

2 x Azure AD Premium P1 (for Admins)

 

 

No.
You will need at least AzureAD Basic for all users you want to license with Group based licensing. If you have M365 F1 you are covered though.
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