AD Attributeįirst step is to find out “How” to identify which users should get which license and services.
And the best part is the is no code or scripting required. This is actually easier than it may sound. You can skip directly to the section “Changes in Azure AD”, if your office 365 users are only in Azure AD and not synced with On-premise AD. Use of an Active Directory (AD) Attribute.This solution depends on the following components/Changes The solution explained below works also if you are not using on-premise AD and only using Microsoft Cloud accounts (like. Wouldn’t it be nice, if following an existing process, you just create an account in on-premise AD and some automation magically assigns the required Office 365 licenses and services? Also, this become quite an effort if there are differences in type of users, like based on some metadata some users need to get E5 whether others get E3 and some need a combination of those.
There will be human errors in assigning licenses or Services.Users will have all types of different licenses assigned.
More often than not, as happens with most such manually managed process: After the sync, an office 365 admin (or a PowerShell Script) assigns the Licenses and Services in Office 365 admin center.A process is created and agreed that “what will be the default set of licenses” and “which services” will be available to the newly created accounts.On-premise domain users are synced with Azure AD using AADSync.In most medium to large size organizations, their current Office 365 setup works similar to this: Yes, you got it right, Automate! Why bother about it?īefore we jump into the solution, let’s spend some time on understanding “why” it is required in the first place. So, what can we do to help reduce the amount of efforts spent on this? With ever growing list of Office 365 Services and mix of license types (like E1, E3, E5 and a combination of those), this has created another world of processes (and PowerShell scripts) to keep up. Last, using the Get-MsolAccountSku cmdlet, we can verify that the ConsumedUnits count of the new licenses match the count of the former licenses (in this example 173).Īdatumdk:O365_BUSINESS_ESSENTIALS 175 0 173Īdatumdk:SMB_BUSINESS_ESSENTIALS 175 175 0Īll accounts have now changed their Office 365 license, without affecting the end users or their data.License assignments has been one of the core governance concerns in Office 365.
We can drill a step further down in the details of each SKU, using the Get-MsolAccountSku cmdlet:ĭetails of the SMB_BUSINESS_ESSENTIALS SKU: Make a note of the ConsumedUnits count (here 173) of the current assigned licenses, as this will be used during the final verification. With PowerShell we can see that they are actually two different licensing SKU ID’s (SKU = Stock Keeping Unit), and this also tells us, that there is difference between the two licenses. Looking in the Office 365 Portal, you may be surprised to see two seperate licenses, as they have the exact same name ( Office 365 Business Essentials), and therefore should be pooled. This situation is ideal for using the Azure AD PowerShell module to perform the license switch.įirst, we need to get the old and new license SKU, using the Get-MsolAccountSku cmdlet.ĪccountSkuId ActiveUnits WarningUnits ConsumedUnitsĪdatumdk:POWER_BI_INDIVIDUAL_USER 100 0 98Īdatumdk:O365_BUSINESS_ESSENTIALS 175 0 0Īdatumdk:SMB_BUSINESS_ESSENTIALS 175 175 173 When making changes to licenses in Office 365, I sometimes experience that the old and new licenses include options that conflict, and does not allow the licenses to be pooled or added to accounts at the same time.Ĭhanging the license of users in Office 365 need to be performed without impacting the end users or affecting the services and data they consume.