Author Archives: Louise Ulrick

Teams and Places licensing changes

Microsoft have announced a raft of Teams licensing changes, coming on 1 April, 2026.

The first is for Places, the app that helps you to find the right space to work in when you’re in the office. It’s got a set of core features found in most licences that include Teams, and premium features previously found (suitably) only in Teams Premium. Two of these features, Places Finder and Places Explorer give you some nice additional features to make it easy to choose and book the right desk, room, or other space, and they’ll be incorporated into all licences that include Teams and Outlook calendar access.

Secondly, there are changes to the Teams Shared Devices licence, which is currently used to license shared devices such as common area phones, Teams Panels, and hotdesking devices. That won’t change, but the name will – it’ll be a Teams Shared Space licence – and it will also be used to manage shared desks, where a single licence will give rights to manage four desks. Note that existing Teams Shared Devices licence customers will need to acquire an additional free licence to enable this additional functionality.

Finally, Town Hall and its advanced large-scale events and webinar features will move from Teams Premium to Teams Enterprise. Along with this change, the attendee allowance in Teams Enterprise is increasing from 1,000 to 3,000 with up to 10,000 in view-only mode. There will also be new Attendee Capacity Pack licences, which will allow customers to further scale view-only attendance from 10,000 up to 100,000 participants.

Find all the details here: https://bit.ly/4qQP6wR, and a useful FAQ here: https://bit.ly/4bs0g6o.

Dragon Copilot Physician Practice User SL

Microsoft add the new Dragon Copilot Physician Practice User SL to the February 2026 Product Terms. Consider this licence the SMB version of Dragon Copilot, aimed at doctors’ practices or single hospital departments, since it’s limited to 100 licences per tenant and has a reduced set of admin controls. Note that these new licences can’t be combined with the original Dragon Copilot licences on a single tenant, and are only available through CSP.

You can find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3MuIZPG, a useful partner FAQ here: https://bit.ly/4auwbkn , and the updated Licensing Guide here: https://bit.ly/4ci4ttG.

Windows 11 Virtual Desktops Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (February 2026) Windows 11 for Virtual Desktops Licensing Guide. This document has a number of tables showing which licences give rights to different virtualisation solutions and a row’s been added throughout for the Microsoft 365 E3/A5 Student Use Benefit. There’s also been a bit of useful reordering in the tables grouping similar licences together. Finally, there’s text added to confirm that VDA E3/E5 licensed users can access Windows 11 VMs running on the dedicated servers of Listed Providers.

Grab this guide here: https://bit.ly/4rMxPFc.

Modern Work Plan Comparison documents

The February 2026 Modern Work Plan Comparison documents have been refreshed, with the exception of the Education flavour, which hasn’t had an update since December 2025. In the Enterprise document, Teams now accurately reflects being available in the regular Office 365 plans, and the Microsoft Defender Experts Suite has been added. For the first time, Microsoft 365 Business Premium (maximum 500 users!) appears in the lineup of the GCC High plans. Otherwise, minor corrections, formatting, and wording changes are sprinkled throughout. The latest PDFs for Enterprise, SMB, US Government, and Education sectors can be accessed in our searchable Licensing Guides Gallery: https://bit.ly/GuidesGallery, exclusive to our subscribers. Non subscribers can find them in the usual place here: https://bit.ly/4hn2hS2.

If you’re a partner looking for the Excel version, please email info@licensingschool.co.uk from your work email address and we’ll send it over.

Copilot Studio Licensing Guide

There’s a new (February 2026) Copilot Studio Licensing Guide available. Details of the Agent Pre-Purchase Plan have been added to the ways to buy Copilot Credits. This Azure reservation is a combined way of buying Copilot Credits and Microsoft Foundry services, which you can read more about in our previous blog post here: https://bit.ly/3NSfp7j. A useful nod to the Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide has been added, signposting where to find information about Dynamics 365 licences which include Copilot Credits. Finally, sections on Code Interpreter, Multi-Agent Orchestration, and Bring Your Own Model have been removed from the guide into the Learn documentation.

Grab a copy of the guide here: https://bit.ly/3M59A5W.

Dynamics 365 licensing resources

There are new (February 2026) Dynamics 365 licensing resources now available. The Licensing Guide has a new section covering the Dynamics variant of the MCP Server, outlining which Dynamics 365 licences include access to its capabilities, as a resource for AI tools to interact with enterprise data. An added paragraph clarifies the nuances of the capabilities and licensing requirements when integrating Dynamics 365 Field Service with Project Operations. Finally, the guide is updated to reflect the End Of Sale of Commerce Recommendations and Commerce Ratings.

Grab the Licensing Guide here: https://bit.ly/4ab9LWz and the supplementary Licensing Deck here: https://bit.ly/4kkFrMz.

Power Platform licensing resources

There are updated (February 2026) Power Platform licensing resources now available. The Power Automate Dataverse capacity table on page 21 of the Licensing Guide has been split into two, now providing a separate table for default capacity per tenant and another for accrued capacity per tenant. With the extra space in the tables, information about Dataverse capacity allowances for the Power Automate Hosted Process licence has finally been included. The only other change is that AI Builder Credits information has been removed from tables throughout. However, it’s worth remembering that if you have licences which have these capacities included, then the Credits do remain available until 1 November, 2026. In terms of the Licensing Deck, details of the Agent Pre-Purchase Plan have been added to the ways to buy Copilot Credits. This Azure Reservation is a combined way of buying Copilot Credits and Microsoft Foundry services, which you can read more about in our previous blog post here: https://bit.ly/3NSfp7j.

Grab the updated Licensing Guide here: https://bit.ly/4rpWDT6, and its sidekick, the Licensing Deck, here: https://bit.ly/3Mc5uZx.

Dynamics 365 Commerce Add-ons End of Sale

Microsoft announce the End Of Sale for Dynamics 365 Commerce Recommendations and Dynamics 365 Commerce Ratings and Reviews. These Dynamics 365 Commerce Add-ons, which supplement an eCommerce website with product suggestions and customer reviews, are no longer available for new purchases, with renewals soon to follow suit.

The (somewhat scant) details can be found here: https://bit.ly/3MgpPNl, and here: https://bit.ly/4qlkzWY.

New Defender for Endpoint and Entra ID Add-ons in CSP

Microsoft have introduced two new CSP Add-on licences: Defender for Endpoint Plan 2 for advanced threat protection and Entra ID Plan 2 for advanced identity and access management. These discounted Add-ons are aimed at customers with Microsoft 365 E3, which already includes the Plan 1 capabilities.

CSP partners will see these options on the price list this month, and the announcement can be found here: https://bit.ly/4t9fHXm.

Retirement of standalone SharePoint Online and OneDrive plans

Microsoft have announced the retirement schedule for standalone SharePoint Online and OneDrive (formerly “OneDrive for Business”) plans. Whilst the services remain available in eligible Microsoft 365 suites, new standalone purchases will no longer be permitted after 31 May, 2026. Renewals will still be available until January 2027, after which they’ll remain on existing contracts until the full retirement date in December 2029. You can find the official announcement here: https://bit.ly/4t7THw5.

If you need help on which alternatives to consider, why not try our new Office 365/Microsoft 365 Plan Picker? Find it here: https://bit.ly/PlanPicker.