Business Card Reader in mixed Dynamics 365 & Power Apps licensing Estate

[ChrisDoran]

Hi

We have a customer who wants to use the Business Card Reader functionality where they have a mixed license estate - some users will have Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise licenses, and some users will have Power Apps licenses.

We can see from the two licensing guides that the business card reader functionality is available with both types of licenses - limited to 20 scans per user per month for the Sales Enterprise users and consuming AI Builder credits in the Power Platform licensing guide.

In this hybrid licensing scenario, is it the case that those users with Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise licenses will be able to do up to 20 scans per user per month, whilst those with Power Apps licenses will consume AI Builder credits?

If so, is it possible to provide more than 20 scans per user per month for the users with Sales Enterprise licenses by purchasing AI Builder credits and assigning those credits to them, or must any additional requirements for those users be fulfilled by providing them with either a Sales Premium license, or a Sales Insight license?

Thanks

Chris

[#2]

Hi @ChrisDoran 

You mentioned that your customer has Sales Enterprise.  Sales Insights included with the Sales Enterprise license and includes 10 scans/user/month.  If additional Business Card Reader capacity is required, you may buy additional Sales Insights capacity licenses to increase the pooled amount.

AI Builder is licensed as an add-on to your Power Apps, Power Automate (or Dynamics 365) license and supports business card reader and is licensed on a capacity basis. The capacity is in the form of “service credits”.  The AI Builder add-on is offered via capacity packs.

See the D365 LG (pg.24 & 25) & the Power Platform LG (pg.27 & 28) for further details regarding business card reader. 

If this reply answers your question, please Accept as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly. Otherwise, please let me know if you need further assistance on this topic.

Regards,

Microsoft CSP Licensing Concierge

[#3]

Thank you for the response - I am taking it to mean that in an environment where some users have Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and some have Power Apps licenses, both can use the Business Card Reader functionality, as long as they stay within the license terms.

In this hybrid licensing scenario, can the users with Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise licenses utilise the Business Card Reader via spare AI Builder credits in that environment or does extra capacity for those users have to be acquired via Sales Insights licenses?

[#4]

@ChrisDoran 

In this hybrid licensing scenario, can the users with Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise licenses utilise the Business Card Reader via spare AI Builder credits in that environment or does extra capacity for those users have to be acquired via Sales Insights licenses?

Are you asking if a user licensed with Sales Enterprise can use AI Builder credits from another Power Apps/Power Automate user?  If so, each user will only have functionality for the licensed purchased. 

See AI Builder licensing.

If this reply answers your question, please Accept as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly. Otherwise, please let me know if you need further assistance on this topic.

Regards,

Microsoft CSP Licensing Concierge

[#5]

@LicensingConcierge1 

As I understand it, AI Builder credits are pooled, either at the environment level or at the tenant level, depending on whether they've been assigned to an environment or not.

An example scenario I have in mind is something like this:

• Customer has 10 x D365 Sales Enterprise licenses, giving them a pool of 100 business card scans in a month
• Customer has 1,000,000 unused AI builder credits
• Customer has consumed all 100 business card scans for the current month

In this scenario, if a user with a D365 Sales Enterprise license tries to use the business card scanner, will they be able to, by them drawing on the unused AI Builder credits, or will the system not allow them to utilise those credits?

[#6]

@LicensingConcierge1 

Just to ensure I'm going to the right place, you mean the partner center at https://partner.microsoft.com, right?

It's just that I don't see an option to ask licensing questions there - just a dropdown allowing me to choose which part of Partner Center I need help with. These are the options I see:

I want to be sure I'm doing this in the right place and in the right way.

Thanks for your help.

[#7]

Chris I believe that technically the answer is yes.

The business card reader in Sales Enterprise uses the app's camera controls (on mobile) or an image of the business card (on desktop) to automatically process fields from the business card.

With Sales Enterprise, you actually get 10 scans per user per month, pooled at the TENANT level which means that in a 10 user setting you actually get 100 scans but you could end up in a situation where 1 person scans 90 leaving the other 9 individuals with only 10 scans left.

The business card reader functionality within AI builder is a different, separate thing and in no way related to the functionality in Sales Enterprise. Here you'll use a custom app with a back-end process linked to Power Automate/AI Builder and perform a similar function but within the Power App itself and not within the Sales Enterprise application. AI Builder should be able to extract the necessary, relevant text and create what I'd assume to be "Leads" in CRM since Leads isn't a restricted table. When users are using the custom app linked to AI Builder, they will be subject to AI Builder credits. When they are using the business card reader functionality in CRM, they will be subject to those limitations.

It's really simple - don't over think it.

[#8]

@blakecheek thanks for the response.  I have to say, though, our investigation shows that the Business Card Reader in Sales Enterprise is the same component as the one you would use in your custom Power App - i.e., the AI Builder component.

If we look at the Lead Quick Create form in the Sales Hub app, you can see it's the AI Builder Business Card control, as per this screenshot:

The control behaves slightly differently than it does completely out of the box, but this seems to be because of a very clever Javascript library on the form.  Therefore, we surmised that the Javascript is the "Sales Enterprise" app part, and the BCR component is the standard AI Builder one.

This is the basis of the question we're asking.  It clearly is the AI Builder component that the Dynamics app is using, ergo it seems reasonable that once the pool of available scans from Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise runs out, users should still be able to use the functionality (maybe without the fancy Javascript) with spare AI Builder credits.

[#9]

Think of it like this:

D365 user does business card reader from within D365 -> it will deduct from D365 entitlement
D365 user does business card reader from custom app connected to AI Builder -> it will deduct from AI Builder credits.

If you're looking to use the same business card reader in D365 and hoping that it starts deducting from your AI Builder credits once your D365 entitled credits run out, I don't think it works that way.

Separate apps = separate buckets, imo.

At the same time, I have to wonder what kind of industry still has massive volumes of business cards that they need to scan in 2023? Anything more than a couple hundred seems egregious.

[#10]

Lol - I certainly agree with the last part, but you know customers! We have a prospective customer who is getting very hung up on this. To be fair, our customers do a lot of in-person networking.

One thing we've always struggled with a little in our customer base is what constitutes "being in D365". All our users use a custom app anyway, even those with D365 SE licenses, so maybe none of them would be classed as being in D365.

[#11]

If all of the users (regardless of d365 license or not) are going to use the custom app, I'm fairly confident it will only care about your AI Builder credits and with a million credits they should be able to scan over 30,000 cards a month.

[#12]

@ChrisDoran 

AI Builder credit entitlement is for those licensed w/ the applicable Power Platform license:

AI Builder licensing and credit management | Microsoft Learn

How each license works with Business Card Reader:

D365 Sales license:

1.  Pg. 26 of the D365 LG (under Sales Use Rights) confirms that Business Card Reader is pooled at the tenant level:

2.  Business Card Reader is provided via the Sales Insights license.  To use Business Card Reader, you may

• Purchase the Sales Enterprise license and the Sales Insight license individually.
• Purchase Sales Premium which includes Sales Insights.

3.  The capacity limit for Business Card Reader is 200/user/month. If additional Business Card Reader capacity is required, you may buy additional Sales Insights capacity licenses to increase the pooled amount, which again, is pooled at the tenant level.

Power Apps license:

1. For the Power Apps license, AI Builder supports Business Card Reader. AI Builder is licensed as an add-on to your Power Apps (or Power Automate) licenses. 

2. AI Builder is licensed on a capacity basis. This capacity is expressed in the form of service credits or AI Builder credits. Access to AI Builder features within an environment requires AI Builder credits.  

3. Each capacity pack includes 1 million service credits per month. Service credits are pooled across the tenant and available service credits are deducted when AI Builder services are used.  

4. Credits can be allocated /assigned to a specific environment, or, credits can also remain unallocated at the tenant level.

5.  Users need to be entitled to some AI Builder capacity. Entitlement can happen through one of the following paid capacities.

• Some Microsoft products like Power Apps per app plan, Power Apps per user plan, and Power Automate Premium (previously Power Automate per user with attended RPA) plan include AI Builder capacity. Your environment admin can check entitlement in Power Platform admin center by following the instructions in Capacity add-ons. When this amount isn't enough, you need to complete it with one or more AI Builder capacity add-ons.
• Main source of credits is AI Builder credit add-on that you can purchase in the Microsoft 365 admin center.

If this reply answers your question, please Accept as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly. Otherwise, please let me know if you need further assistance on this topic.

Regards,

Microsoft CSP Licensing Concierge