[Index]

Model: device/msgraph/MsolAccountSku

Licenses

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Overview

Automate can be used to assign, modify, and remove Microsoft user licenses.

To allow Automate to manage Microsoft user licenses, you will need to enable the following setting in the site's site defaults (MS Teams tab): Manage Licenses and Allow User Staging

When Automate is enabled for license management:

• Admins can use Quick user to optionally configure the correct licensing and MS Teams configuration when onboarding new users.
• Microsoft license data can be synced in to Automate from the Microsoft cloud, and specified in the Quick Add Group (QAG) configuration templates as part of the provisioning workflow.

Users are placed in staging (an unsaved state) while license data is synced in to Automate. A licensed user may be assigned with a line and available number in Automate.

Targeted syncs may be scheduled from Automate to poll the Microsoft cloud for changes at regular intervals. Users are automatically provisioned in Automate, based on their service profiles and assigned licenses. The sync process moves Microsoft users to appropriate sites with the correct configuration, based on the site defaults, filter criteria, and user service profiles. The number assigned to the user is added to a number inventory in Automate, and is flagged with the user's name.

Managing licenses for Microsoft users when onboarding and offboarding

Automate requires the LicenseAssignment permission to manage Microsoft licenses.

To avoid system errors, it is recommended that you do not use Azure AD User (MSOL) (Msoluser device model, device/msgraph/msoluser) to make changes, particularly when license permissions aren't assigned. Instead, it is recommended that you use the Microsoft User Details page (relation/MicrosoftSubscriber) or other Automate functionality to update users.

If a user has any group assigned license, Automate won't attempt any direct license assignment at all, via onboarding or via updates on the Microsoft User Details page (relation/MicrosoftSubscriber), regardless of what may be included in Automate configuration templates or in the Microsoft portal.

When offboarding, if Automate is set up to remove a user's direct licenses, this is only possible when Automate is also removing all the license groups. If any license group remains, the direct licenses aren't removed. For example, if a user has base licenses (for example, E3) assigned via group, and you want Automate to add MCOEV as a direct license, this won't be possible. In this case, it is only possible to add the MCOEV license via a group license assignment, since it is possible to assign or remove additional groups.

The group license assignment during onboarding and offboarding is not only used for licenses, so it can be used to add or remove non-license groups together with direct licensing, or for no licensing, as needed.

Related topics

• Onboard user (Microsoft)
• Offboarding (Microsoft)

View Microsoft licenses by customer

To view all Microsoft licenses synced currently synced in to Automate, go to the Licenses page. The Licenses summary list view provides the following license details per customer:

• License name (see the Microsoft License Names list for the mapping of the SKU ID number to the License Name)
• Number of active licenses
• Number of used licenses
• Customer name

Licensing users for MS Teams and Teams Phone by group membership

Automate provides options to manage licensing by group membership. Licenses associated with the group apply to members of the group.

Such licensing can be configured:

• For subscriber on-boarding and off-boarding by the selected Quick Add Groups in the case of:

  • Microsoft Quick User

  • Offboard User

    Selected in the Offboard User configuration template (for target model view/MicrosoftSubscriberQas)

  • Flow Through Provisioning

    Flow through provisioning uses the associated Subscriber Profile that selects an item from Quick Add Groups.

  This option requires the selection of specific configuration templates for Microsoft in the user Quick Add Groups associated with users:

  • MS Groups Add Template
  • MS Groups Remove Template

  For details on configuring these templates, refer to the Configuration Templates for MS Groups section below.

• Manually, via Manage Group Membership. For details around configuring settings on this page, see Manage Group Membership.

  You can also use the Multi-vendor Quick Action to open this form - see: Configure Quick Actions for multi vendor users.

Microsoft license management and alerting

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Overview

Where Microsoft 365 user licenses are available to an organization as a whole on a single Microsoft tenant, Automate offers support for the allocation of these licenses to various business units and departments within such an organization - represented as hierarchies in Automate.

License allocation at a hierarchy can be managed in Automate from the Microsoft License Management group of the Microsoft dashboard.

In addition, a number of charts and tables are available to administrators on the Microsoft License Summary dashboards - providing an overview of license allocation, availability and usage at hierarchies. See: Microsoft License Summary dashboard.

Automate also enables you to set user license enforcement and allocation thresholds at hierarchies. This means that licenses will only be allocated to a subscriber at a hierarchy if these are available. Threshold availability percentage values can be set per hierarchy and allows for scheduled alerting to email groups whenever these thresholds are reached, so that timely action can be taken.

Related topics

• Onboard user (Microsoft)
• Microsoft Licenses
• Microsoft users
• Microsoft Quick User

Prerequisites and first steps

In order for the license enforcement, threshold percentage values and alerting to be available, it is necessary that:

• Microsoft Licenses are available.

• Licenses are synced from devices (device: device/msgraph/MsolAccountSku) to the organization hierarchy level.

  The Microsoft Licenses link on the Microsoft License Management group of the Microsoft dashboard provides a list view of the global pool of licenses, showing active, consumed, available (incl. percentage) licenses per hierarchy.

• License data syncs are configured. The feature provides:

  • Microsoft License Data Syncs
  • Microsoft License Model Type Lists
  • Microsoft License Schedules

  offering default syncs and schedules that can be modified and used to manage license syncs at a hierarchy.

  Note that:

  • An alerting schedule MicrosoftLicenseAlert is also provided that can be further configured to schedule alerts if license alerting is enabled.
  • Quick Import is enabled by default for syncs related to data/MSGraph that sync Microsoft license data from Microsoft Graph.

  For details on data sync, refer to Data Sync.

• Global Settings need to be set:

  Two settings are provided

  • Enable Microsoft User License Enforcement (default is No/Inherit):

    If this setting is enabled, license allocations per hierarchy are enforced.

  • Microsoft License Alerting

    If this setting is enabled, alerts are sent when configured license usage thresholds are reached at a hierarchy. See: Microsoft License Alerting.

    Note that this setting requires that Enable Microsoft User License Enforcement is enabled.

  See: Global Settings.

• Mappings for Microsoft License Names and Service Plan Names are noted.

  On the the Microsoft License Management group on the Microsoft dashboard, Automate provides:

  • Microsoft License Names

    A default mapping of License Number (SKU Part Number) to License Name

  • Service Plan Names

    A default mapping of Service Plan Number to Service Plan Name

  These mappings can be referenced and configured if required; and provide a user-friendly name display for these items on the Automate user interface.

Microsoft license allocation

Allocate licenses to a hierarchy.

Prerequisite: MS licenses have been synced in at high level organizational hierarchy.

1. Navigate to required hierarchy and open Microsoft License Allocation on the Microsoft License Management group on the Microsoft dashboard.

2. Add a new record to Microsoft License Allocation:

   • The License Name dropdown list only shows names of available licenses at the selected hierarchy (as mapped on the Microsoft License Names table on the Microsoft License Management group on the Microsoft dashboard). In other words, there is a single, unique allocation instance for a license name at a hierarchy.

   • A read-only number of the Maximum Limit Allowed is displayed for the selected license. This is the number of licenses un-allocated at or up the hierarchy.

   • Enter a License Allocation Limit number for the selected license name and hierarchy and save the record. If alerting thresholds are set for this limit, this number is used to determine the threshold value. If this limit is reached during subscriber licensing provisioning - for example using Microsoft Quick User - the transaction will fail.

     Note

     When entering a license allocation limit at a hierarchy, the selected number may be less than the number of licenses currently consumed at the selected hierarchy - as reflected when viewing the added record. In this case, the new record requires modification in order to adjust this allocation limit.

     The maximum License Allocation Limit for a specified hierarchy is obtained by the following calculation:

     parent license allocation limit (the first instance found searching up the hierarchy)
     
     less
     
     the sum of (all license allocation limits set at the same hierarchy level)
     

     If no parent license allocation limit exists, the total active units value is used, as sourced from the device/msgraph/MsolSkuAccount model.

3. The added record displays in the Microsoft License Allocation list view, with columns showing:

   • The License Allocation Limit number as entered. (This number should not be higher than the Licenses Consumed.)
   • The current Licenses Consumed number as calculated for the hierarchy and lower.
   • The Licenses Available number and percentage (%) columns, as calculated for the hierarchy and lower.
   • The Located At hierarchy name.

4. In the global settings, select threshold percentages per license at a hierarchy using the Availability Threshold Percentage setting. If alerting has been enabled and the threshold is reached, an alert will be raised and also sent by email if enabled.

5. If alerting email groups have been selected in Global Settings, ensure that alerting Email Groups have been set up and selected as the global setting: Alert Email Group. (For details on how to set up email groups, see Email.)

Microsoft license alerting

1. On Global Settings, two settings need to be enabled to use the license altering feature:

   • Enable Microsoft User License Enforcement (default is No/Inherit):
   • Microsoft License Alerting

2. On Microsoft License Alerting:

   • Enable Alert on Microsoft Licenses (options: Yes, No, inherit. Default is No) Only if enabled, will any alerts be raised.

     A license allocation transaction above a threshold of available licenses will fail and the alert will be created.

     Fields are exposed to configure as below.

   • Availability Threshold Percentage (select from: 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, inherit)

     Set a percentage value of available licenses which, when reached, should trigger an alert.

   • Enable Email Group (choose: Yes, No, inherit)

     An option to send the alerts to an email group.

   • Alert Email Group (choose an email group)

     If enabled, the default email group to send alerts to - for email group setup, see: Email.

Microsoft license summary dashboard

This dashboard provides default widgets that allow for the inspection of license usage:

• Charts:

  • License Count by Customer

    Provides a view of the number of licenses in use at the Customer hierarchy/hierarchies, at or below the current (customer/higher level) hierarchy.

  • User License Status

    Provides a view of the percentage of licenses in use at the current hierarchy, grouped by license name.

• Table:

  • Microsoft Licenses

    Provides a detailed view of the licenses in use at or below the current hierarchy, with columns for:

    • License Name: the license name as mapped from the license SKU number
    • Licenses Consumed: number of licenses in use at the hierarchy
    • License Allocation Limit: license allocation limit (number) at the hierarchy
    • Licenses Available/%: number/percentage of licenses available at the hierarchy
    • Located At: hierarchy name

Model Details: device/msgraph/MsolAccountSku