Forms Pro is rebranded as Dynamics 365 Customer Voice

Microsoft announce that Forms Pro is rebranded as Dynamics 365 Customer Voice, an enterprise feedback management solution. There are templates to help users get started on gathering feedback and the ability to analyse feedback and act on it.

There are no changes to the licensing – customers with Enterprise flavours of Dynamics 365 licences have 2,000 survey responses included per tenant per month, and Office 365 users can buy an add-on for the same capacity. Existing customers don’t need to do anything – current surveys in Forms Pro are moved to Dynamics 365 Customer Voice.

Find an overview of a Customer Voice solution here: https://bit.ly/2X3PZGj.

Expanded use rights for Azure Hybrid Benefit with SQL Server

Microsoft announce some expanded use rights for the Azure Hybrid Benefit with SQL Server giving additional flexibility in using Standard and Enterprise Core licences for Azure IaaS and PaaS solutions.

SQL Server Standard Core licences may now be used for SQL Server Enterprise virtual machines with 4 Core licences required for each virtual core, and SQL Server Enterprise Core licences may now be used for SQL Server Standard virtual machines with 1 Core licence covering 4 virtual cores.

There are similar changes for the licence requirements for the Azure Data Factory SQL Server Integration Services Standard/Enterprise, and SQL Server Standard Core licences may now also be used for Azure SQL Database Business Critical solutions with a requirement of 4 Core licences to cover a virtual core.

You can find the announcement article here: https://bit.ly/2PlP6oh and find the official documentation on pages 54/55  of the August 2020 Product Terms document: http://bit.ly/MSproductterms.

Reserved Capacity available for Azure DB for PostgreSQL- Hyperscale (Citus)

Microsoft extend the Reservations family again with the availability of Reserved Capacity for the compute power of Hyperscale (Citus) server groups.

As you may expect there are one and three-year Reserved Capacity options available with savings of up to 45% and 65% respectively.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/300NwOZ, and find out more about this new Reserved Capacity option here: https://bit.ly/3jJLydq.

Azure Monetary Commitment is now Azure prepayment

Azure Monetary Commitment is the upfront payment an Enterprise Agreement customer makes for use of the Azure consumption services, which is then decremented on a monthly basis as the services are used. This is now renamed to Azure prepayment but there are no other changes in terms of how it works. Find the Azure prepayment section starting on page 53 of the July 2020 Product Terms, and download the document itself here: http://bit.ly/MSproductterms.

Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (July 2020) Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide.

The main update is for the two new Fraud Protection capabilities – Account Protection and Loss Protection.

Get an overview of Fraud Protection and its licensing on our blog here: https://bit.ly/3f1eLNp, and download the updated Licensing Guide here: https://bit.ly/32WlZjp.

Azure Cost Management – June 2020 update

Azure Cost Management is constantly evolving to help customers better understand where they’re accruing costs in the cloud, to identify and prevent bad spending patterns, and to optimise costs.

Updates to the tools for June 2020 include more flexibility for budget notifications, the ability to subscribe to active cost recommendations with Advisor digests, and improvements in the transfer of Subscription ownership. There are also some new ways to save money with Azure, as well as some new videos to learn more about Azure Cost Management.

Find the detail on all of these enhancements in the Azure Cost Management June 2020 update here: https://bit.ly/2CRFIGl.

Updates to Get Licensing Ready

If you’re a fan of Get Licensing Ready then you’ll be excited to know that there are some new tracks and modules for you to work through. All the prior certifications (MLSS, MLSE etc) remain under a “Prior GLR tracks” tab, but now there are separate “Microsoft products” and “Microsoft programs” tabs where you’ll find the existing modules and some new ones too.

Check out the new “Licensing Specialist: cloud solutions” track which has brand new modules about licensing Windows and SQL Server in Azure, and how the Microsoft server products are licensed in the public cloud.

If you’re not already a GLR user, head to https://getlicensingready.com – it’s free to register, and you’ll find your day just got better from a licensing perspective 🙂

New capabilities for Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection

Microsoft announce two new capabilities for Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection: the Account Protection capability safeguards user accounts by combating fake account creation, account takeover, and fraudulent account access, and the Loss Prevention capability helps to mitigate losses by identifying potential fraud on returns and discounts. This adds to the original Purchase Protection capability which protects online revenue by improving the acceptance rate of commerce transactions.

From a licensing perspective, organisations choose their primary capability which also includes transactions for the other capabilities. For example, the Account Protection licence includes 100,000 Account Protection transactions, as well as 2,000 Purchase Protection transactions and 4,000 Loss Prevention transactions. Each of the primary capabilities costs $1,000 per month, and then additional transactions may be added in increments of $150 if the number of total transactions is below a certain amount (which is different for each capability), and $100 if it’s more.

You can find the original announcement here: https://bit.ly/301aLbJ and the Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide gives more details on the amount of transactions included for each of the capabilities and their add-ons. Find the July 2020 Licensing Guide here: https://bit.ly/32WlZjp.