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.

Microsoft Copilot Studio

Microsoft announced Copilot Studio in November 2023, a conversational AI platform for users to create bots (copilots) using natural language or a graphical interface. It’s built on Power Virtual Agents, and to that end, the Power Virtual Agents brand is retired in favour of Copilot Studio. It’s licensed with a tenant capacity licence costing $200 per month allowing 25,000 messages and, as with Power Virtual Agents, a zero-cost Per User licence is required for every user who will create copilots.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3SCDiQd, and Microsoft’s Copilot Studio licensing page here: https://bit.ly/3SAEjbi.

Universal Print User SL

Microsoft added the Universal Print User SL to the October 2023 Product Terms, a licence for users who need to make use of the Azure-based software-as-a-service printing solution and who don’t have one of the licences that include Universal Print jobs (Microsoft 365 F3/E3/E5/Business Premium or Windows 11 Enterprise E3/E5). The standalone licence costs $4 per user per month and includes 5 print jobs, as do the Windows 11 Enterprise E3/E5 and Microsoft 365 F3 licences – the rest include 100 print jobs. There are then two Add-ons available for higher print volume – another 500 jobs cost $25 per month, and 10,000 jobs cost $300 per month, and you need to commit to the extra volume for a year.

There’s a good page on licensing Universal Print here: https://bit.ly/3Mzfbzd.

Azure Arc ESUs for DR and Dev/Test environments

Microsoft added text to the October 2023 Product Terms confirming that if a customer has enabled Extended Security Updates through Azure Arc they may use the updates on licensed Disaster Recovery servers and in Dev/Test environments.

Find the terms here: https://bit.ly/3Y6xsac, and note that the same rules apply for the traditional 1-year ESUs, the terms of which are here: https://bit.ly/46ldV8W.

Windows Server Annual Channel for Containers

Microsoft add use rights for the Windows Server Annual Channel for Containers to the October 2023 Product Terms. Customers are eligible to use this operating system if they have Windows Server Datacenter Core licences acquired either with Software Assurance or as Software Subscriptions and can expect a new release every 12 months, with support for 24 months.

You can find an announcement article here: https://bit.ly/48QwBzo, an overview of Windows Server servicing channels here: https://bit.ly/3ucQHFe, and the relevant Product Terms page here: https://bit.ly/3SBAhzE.