Microsoft Teams free upgrade to Microsoft 365 Business Premium

[mhilboezen]

Dear community, 

As you might notice from the subject, I have a question about upgrading Microsoft Teams free to a Microsoft 365 Business premium license. 

Currently, the Microsoft Teams free license is in use and we're investigating options to migrate to Microsoft Business Premium without losing used channels and data. Before upgrading, I've one question Microsoft can't give a clear answer to. Neither can I find the answers within the Microsoft documentation: Is it safe to assign the Microsoft 365 Premium license to this tenant so we can configure AD-connect, Hybrid Exchange, and Intune WITHOUT disabling the 'Microsoft Teams free' version? 

Now, the organization is going to work with Microsoft 365 Business premium. According to Microsofts documentation "All users must be upgraded: a mix of Teams Free (classic) and paid subscription users in the same tenant isn't supported.". 

As we prefer created (external) users to work with Microsoft Teams free (until the end of support in April 2023) until all the hybrid setup has been tested by a handful of users synced from the on-premises environment.

Sources: 

https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2213960 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/upgrade-freemium#limitations

 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/for-admins-upgrading-from-teams-free-classic-to-a-paid-s...

 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/upgrade-from-microsoft-teams-free-classic-to-microsoft-t...

Thanks in advance,

Matthijs

[#2 · Accepted solution]

No. When you upgrade your Teams free (classic) org. you're leaving the AAD free version of tenant and Teams free (classic) that came along with it. But you have the new Teams free to use for any other personal scenarios.

[#3]

Hi Christian,

Thanks for your reply and clear answer! Sorry for the late reaction. Meanwhile, I've been working on a solution that worked for this organization within this scenario.

As the users within the described tenant were 'external users', I've added one Business Premium license to the newly created GA within this tenant. And as you described, the 'free tenant' settings are upgraded and the tenant will receive all paid features, groups etc. From this account, I was able to configure AAD, Exchange Online, and Intune without interrupting the Microsoft Teams free accounts. Despite this there will be a moment when the external accounts have to be removed from AAD and on-premises accounts will be synced from AAD and users can log in with their "new" identity in AAD.

Thanks again!