Retirement of Viva Goals

Microsoft announce that Viva Goals will be retired on 31 December 2025 with no new feature development from 5 December 2024. Customers with existing licences may continue using Viva Goals until their licences expire or until 31 December 2025, whichever comes first.

You can find information about the retirement here: https://bit.ly/40ufuBL, including the reason for the retirement – there hasn’t been enough adoption to justify Microsoft’s further investment in the product.

Power Platform Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (December 2024) Power Platform Licensing Guide with a couple of quite important changes. Firstly, it’s updated for the new Pay-As-You-Go option for Copilot Studio (see our blog: https://bit.ly/409uPYs) and secondly, the word “Agents” replaces “Copilot” as the thing that you create in Copilot Studio.

Find this updated Licensing Guide here: https://bit.ly/41a40nU.

Copilot Studio Pay-As-You-Go

Copilot Studio is available on a Pay-As-You-Go basis from 1 December, 2024. That means that you can now choose to buy either the original Capacity Pack of 25,000 messages for $200 a month, or pay for messages that you use at a cost of $0.01 per message. As you might expect, messages are paid for via an Azure Subscription at the end of the month. If you want to, you can combine the two options, with the messages from the Capacity Packs being consumed first.

Find the Microsoft announcement here: https://bit.ly/4fgt7J1, and the pricing page here: https://bit.ly/4gvpLTs.

Microsoft 365 plan comparison documents

There are updated (December 2024) Microsoft 365 plan comparison documents with just a small section added for Microsoft Places.

These useful documents tell you which of the (many) different components are included in which Office 365/Microsoft 365 plan, and there’s a table for SMB customers (https://bit.ly/3VkOJwM), one for Enterprise customers (https://bit.ly/49AyVvX), and one for Education customers (https://bit.ly/3CWY3k8), and still more for specialist US customers – one for GCC (https://bit.ly/4ibbixP), one for GCC High (https://bit.ly/3Ba7ITT) and the final one for DoD (https://bit.ly/3VmCAY2). And, if you’re a partner, there’s exciting news – we’ve found the Excel version of these files again! Drop us an email on info@licensingschool.co.uk from your work email address and we’ll send it on.

And don’t forget our free Glossary to get quick definitions of things like Microsoft Places: https://bit.ly/LVGlossary.

GA of Microsoft Places

Microsoft announce that Microsoft Places is now generally available. This new technology is based on Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot and is designed to help users have a better experience when they’re working from their office – by making it easy to coordinate in-person gatherings or to sync up spontaneously with colleagues also working from the office on a particular day. From a licensing perspective there are three tiers of features: core, enhanced, and additional. If you’ve got Microsoft 365 Business Basic/Standard/Premium, Office 365 F3/E1/E3/E5 or Microsoft 365 F3/E3/E5 licence then you have access to the core features, although you’ll also need a Teams licence if it’s not included in your plan. The enhanced features are available through a Teams Premium Add-on licence, and the additional features need a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence too.

You can find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/4eIoUgX with lots of visionary information as to what Places might do for you, and the more pragmatic Learn documentation here: https://bit.ly/4i3m8ph.

Fabric SKU Estimator

The Fabric workloads all consume the same Fabric Capacity Units and there’s a new Fabric SKU Estimator tool to help customers identify the appropriate SKU for their needs, based on their data requirements, usage patterns, and workload combinations. The tool is currently in private preview.

You can find out more about the tool and apply to join the private preview here: https://bit.ly/4i0SmBM.

Microsoft 365 plan comparison for education

Microsoft’s plan comparison documents are fantastic for seeing which components are included in which Office 365/Microsoft 365 plans. They’re often updated monthly and the eagle-eyed among you have spotted that we didn’t post a November 2024 version for Education earlier in the month. Well, we’ve found it now and it’s uploaded for your download delight here: https://bit.ly/496JV3P.

Windows 365 Frontline Shared Mode

Microsoft announce that there’s a new Shared Mode for Windows 365 Frontline which is now in public preview. The original mode, now called Dedicated Mode, is aimed at users with staggered working hours. It allows you to provision personalised Cloud PCs for up to three users for each Windows 365 Frontline licence as long as those Cloud PCs are used non-concurrently. The new mode is for when you want to provision a single Cloud PC which lots of people need to use for short periods on an ad hoc basis, perhaps for a specific task. Only one person can use the Cloud PC at a time, and when they sign out all user data is deleted.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3CL02aW, the Learn documentation here: https://bit.ly/4fWXKnu, and a Microsoft Mechanics video here: https://bit.ly/3UZNsey.