Author Archives: Louise Ulrick

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat

Microsoft announce that there are enhancements to the Microsoft Copilot experience for users with a Microsoft Entra account and, because of that, there’s a name change… Welcome Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat! It’s the use of Agents in the chat experience that’s the big news – oh, and the fact that these can be paid for on a consumption basis.

You can find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3Cj84bp, and information on how the consumption works here: https://bit.ly/4auaUXB.

Alternatively, if you’re a Licensing School subscriber join our Did You See..? training session on Wednesday 22nd January, 2025 and let us teach you all about it: https://bit.ly/3Wy2CbZ.

Microsoft 365 plan comparison documents

There are updated (January 2025) Microsoft 365 plan comparison documents with some small changes: a little bit of rewording in the Microsoft Loop section, and the removal of Viva Goals ahead of its retirement (see our blog: https://bit.ly/4gPf0fn).

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/4fQnCRN), one for Enterprise customers (https://bit.ly/4fJP8QR), and one for Education customers (https://bit.ly/42694dp), and still more for specialist US customers – one for GCC (https://bit.ly/4a9Fcig), one for GCC High (https://bit.ly/3DPtYDG) and the final one for DoD (https://bit.ly/403RX9z). 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 Loop: https://bit.ly/LVGlossary.

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.