Category Archives: Uncategorized

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.

Amendment to the definition of Firstline Worker devices

The June 2020 Product Terms contains an amendment to the definition of Firstline Worker devices. A Firstline Worker is typically someone whose job is primarily based away from a PC – think construction worker or doctor – but they do need some access to technology.

Rules for assigning Office 365 F3 and Microsoft 365 F1/F3 licences (the Firstline Worker plans) are based on the user’s primary device. Prior to June 2020, a Firstline Worker was not allowed to have a Dedicated Device – a computing device with a screen of 10.1″ or larger used by the user for more than 60% of their total work time in any 90-day period.

It’s simpler from June 2020 – the user’s primary device must have a single screen smaller than 10.1″ OR they must share their primary device with other qualifying Firstline Workers.

Find the rules on page 58 of the June 2020 Product Terms and find the Product Terms document itself here: http://bit.ly/MSproductterms.

System Center Configuration Manager is now Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager

Microsoft Endpoint Manager is the name for all of Microsoft’s endpoint management solutions, and includes System Center Configuration Manager and Microsoft Intune. The benefit of Microsoft Endpoint Manager is that it makes it easier for organisations to concurrently manage Windows 10 devices with both Configuration Manager and Microsoft Intune, a configuration called co-management. Bringing everything up to date, the July 2020 Product Terms updates the name of System Center Configuration Manager to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager.

In terms of co-management licensing, organisations don’t have to buy both Configuration Manager and Intune licences: if they are licensed for Configuration Manager then they are automatically licensed for Intune for co-managing Windows PCs, and if they are licensed for Intune, then they are also automatically licensed for Configuration Manager for co-managing Windows PCs. There are some management scenarios which aren’t covered with the co-management rights and this article has some useful instances of when you would also need a full Intune licence when you have a Configuration Manager licence, for example: https://bit.ly/2WIZieT.

There’s a name change but there aren’t changes to the licensing of Configuration Manager. As a recap, there’s a current branch and long-term servicing branch (LTSB) for Configuration Manager, with the current branch providing an active servicing model as you would expect. Customers who have active Software Assurance or a subscription to EMS E3 (for example) may use this branch. Configuration Manager must always be purchased with Software Assurance through a Volume Licensing agreement and the LTSB is intended for customers who have perpetual licence rights to Configuration Manager but have let the SA expire. This is a useful article if you want to learn more about branches and licensing: https://bit.ly/3hpw0JX.

And finally, there’s a Microsoft Endpoint Manager FAQ document which you may find useful here: https://bit.ly/32JtVog.

5-year Reservation available for the Azure HBv2 virtual machine

Microsoft announce that a 5-year Reservation is now available for the Azure HBv2 virtual machine. The existing 1 and 3-year Reservations give an estimated 25% and 50% saving on the compute costs of the VM, and the new 5-year Reservation increases savings to approximately 67%.

The announcement (https://bit.ly/32EWfI9) states that terms and conditions are mostly the same as for all other types of Reserved Instances, and page 54 of the July 2020 Product Terms confirms that the early termination fee for a 5-year Reservation is 35%, rather than the usual 12%.

Dynamics 365 Mixed Reality Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (June 2020) Dynamics 365 Mixed Reality Licensing Guide, with the most significant change being amendments for the discontinuation of the Dynamics 365 Layout application. Find the updated guide here: https://bit.ly/D365MixRLGJune2020 and information on Dynamics 365 Layout here: https://bit.ly/D365LayoutBLOG.

Discontinuation of Dynamics 365 Layout

Microsoft announce that Dynamics 365 Layout will be discontinued as a separate application and will not be offered to new customers after 1 June, 2020. Current customers will be able to use the application until 31 December, 2021 or when their current subscription ends, whichever is earlier. Core Layout capabilities will be integrated into the Dynamics 365 Guides product.

See the announcement here and suggestions on where to get assistance if you’re an existing customer: https://bit.ly/2YooZ4n.

Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (June 2020) Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide. There are only small changes with the most interesting ones being clarification that Team Members do not have admin rights, and that Human Resources Self Service use rights are only included for Team Members when the Human Resources application is licensed.

Find this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/D365LGJune2020

Azure Dedicated Hosts now support additional VM types

Microsoft announce that Azure Dedicated Hosts now support M-series and NV v3 and v4-series virtual machines so that customers can run memory-intensive and graphics-intensive applications.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/2XYnuK3, and the main Azure Dedicated Host page here: http://bit.ly/2KkxB6m which details the full range of VMs supported and has some useful configuration examples.

Licensing desktop applications with RDS – Licensing Brief

There’s an updated (April 2020) Licensing Brief detailing how to license the desktop applications with RDS. The main change is to include the October 2019 changes to the licensing terms for Outsourcing Software Management which affect customers choosing to host Office applications on a dedicated server.

Find this updated Licensing Brief here: https://bit.ly/RDSVLBrApr2020

June 2020 Product Terms updates for Dynamics 365

There’s extra information added for Dynamics 365 on pages 65/66 in the June 2020 Product Terms document. First of all there’s a new Dual Use Rights table detailing the rights of Dynamics 365 SLs to access on-premises servers, and then there are a couple of tables which specify the purchasing minimums for academic and commercial programs.

Download the latest Product Terms document here: http://bit.ly/MSproductterms.