Azure Standard Support offer extended

Customers buying their Azure services through an Enterprise Agreement or via the MCA-E have long been eligible for free Azure Standard Support, and Microsoft confirm that this offer will be extended to June 30, 2024, with both new and renewing customers eligible for support for a period of 6 months.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3u1mUPN, terms of the offer here: https://bit.ly/3CTFrhq, and a useful comparison of all the Azure Support plans here: https://bit.ly/44i3x1h.

Power Apps licence assignment

Microsoft have made a number of changes to assist in the assignment of Power Apps licences to users that need them.

In April 2023 users were able to request a licence when they needed it (https://bit.ly/43cMw87), in May 2023 a maker was able to request a licence for users of their app (https://bit.ly/49dHATh), and in September 2023 an IT admin could set up an auto-claim policy that automatically assigns available licences to users as they need them (https://bit.ly/48UUeqH).

The latest innovation (November 2023) is that auto-claim policies are automatically created for a managed environment.

You can find the announcement article here: https://bit.ly/47UpXHp, and find out more about auto-claim policies here: https://bit.ly/3SjVdK3.

Dynamics 365 Licensing Guides

The Dynamics team do a great job of keeping their Licensing Guides up-to-date. Read on for the news about the changes and additions over the last few months.

November 2023 Licensing Guide

  • Removal of the 1-year licences for the Fraud Protection offerings

December 2023 Licensing Guide

  • The Field Service User SL now includes access to Dynamics 365 Guides and Remote Assist
  • The Field Service Contractor User SL is added to page 16, and you can find out more on our blog: https://bit.ly/4biwD4L

January 2024 Licensing Guide

  • The Finance Premium User SL is added to pages 18 and 19, and you can find out more on our blog: https://bit.ly/4birM3Q
  • The Operations Database capacity that is accrued for each individual Finance, Supply Chain Management, Commerce and Project Operations User SL is increased from 1.5 GB to 4 GB – see page 38
  • There’s a new option to purchase Dataverse / Operations Additional Database Capacity in increments of 1 TB – see page 40
  • Power Virtual Agents is replaced throughout by Copilot Studio, and you can find out more on our blog: https://bit.ly/3Uie6zq

Microsoft 365 plan comparison documents

There are updated (January 2024) Microsoft 365 plan comparison documents. These jolly useful documents tell you which (of the many) different components are included in which plan, and now there’s a table for SMB customers (https://bit.ly/3U6iUIh), one for Enterprise customers (https://bit.ly/3u0nn4H), one for Education customers (https://bit.ly/47TMmnS) and still more for EEA customers – one for SMB (https://bit.ly/3S8K0Mm) and the final one for Enterprise (https://bit.ly/428kLhw). Enjoy!

Power Platform Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (December 2023) Power Platform Licensing Guide, with the main change being the morphing of Power Virtual Agents into Copilot Studio.

Find out more about that here: https://bit.ly/3Uie6zq, and get the updated Licensing Guide here: https://bit.ly/4968mgq.

Dynamics 365 Field Service Contractor User SL

Microsoft add the newly available Dynamics 365 Field Service Contractor User SL to the January 2024 Product Terms. This $50 per user per month licence is designed to complement the existing $95 per user per month Field Service licence to manage third-party technicians. Note that you can’t buy the Contractor licence without having at least one of the regular Field Service licences.

This page is useful to see which features are included in which licence: https://bit.ly/3HB1XOM.

Clipchamp licensing options

Clipchamp is a tool to help users to create professional-looking videos, and Microsoft announced in November 2023 that it’s now available to users with Microsoft 365 E3/E5 or Microsoft 365 Business Standard/Premium licences. In addition, there’s a new Premium Add-on licence for these users to get access to some additional features such as premium stock content. This licence will cost $7 per user per month after June 30, 2024 but there’s some introductory pricing at $5 per user per month until then. For users not eligible for included Clipchamp rights there’s a new Standard standalone licence at £3 per user per month, or a Premium standalone licence currently costing $7 which rises to $10 per user per month in July 2024.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3Om2DeC.

System Center Software Subscriptions

Microsoft extended the range of Software Subscriptions in CSP by adding System Center in November 2023. Both Standard and Datacenter Core licences are available in 2-packs for terms of either 1 or 3 years. In addition, the requirement for a customer to have a minimum of 16 System Center Core licences before they can choose to license by virtual machine is removed.

Find the Product Terms entry here: https://bit.ly/48MjxLu.

Dynamics 365 Finance Premium

Microsoft add the newly available Dynamics 365 Finance Premium User SL to the January 2024 Product Terms. This $300 per user per month licence equips users with tools to build advanced financial plans, budgets, analytics, and insights, and includes all the functionality available in the existing $180 per user per month Finance User SL. From a purchasing perspective it’s available through the EA/MPSA/CSP and EES agreements and there’s a minimum purchase requirement of 20 licences which can be combined across Finance and Finance Premium. This new licence also includes 200 electronic invoice and invoice capture transactions per tenant per month, as well as 50,000 AI Builder credits.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/42iIE6s, and an overview of the different capabilities between the Finance licences here: https://bit.ly/3HzLASp.