Advanced Communications is available

Microsoft announce that Advanced Communications is available from August 1, 2020.

This adds a new set of capabilities for Teams, costs $12 per user per month and may be added on to any licence that includes the Teams service.

It supports large meetings enhancing the standard Teams limits from 10,000 to 20,000 attendees, 15 to 50 concurrent events, and event durations from 4 to 16 hours. Note that these limits are already uplifted for all Teams users until 1 October, 2020 – find details of that here: https://bit.ly/3lf2fON.

It also supports integration with ISV compliance recording and contact centre solutions, and will support custom branded meeting lobbies in the near future.

Find details of what’s included here: https://bit.ly/31r24b8, the announcement itself here: https://bit.ly/3hsYl2l, and a useful FAQ here: https://bit.ly/34vzoQr.

Expansion of self-service purchase capability

Microsoft expand the capability for end users to purchase licences on their organisation’s tenant without going through the IT department.

From 15 September, 2020 users will be able to purchase Visio Plan 1 and Plan 2, and Project Plan 1 and Plan 3, as well as the currently available Power Apps per user, Power Automate per user and Power BI Pro products.

IT administrators can see any licences that have been purchased in this way through the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, and can turn off self-service purchase on a product by product basis using PowerShell – find instructions here: https://bit.ly/2Eum8Am.

There’s also a useful FAQ to get an overview of the processes from both the end users’ and the IT administrators’ perspective here: http://bit.ly/2T034Pe.

Dynamics 365 Business Central Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (August 2020) Dynamics 365 Business Central Licensing Guide.

The main change is additional clarification for the use of customisation when applied to Team Members scenarios.

Check out the Change Log on page 14 for details of the changes, and find the updated guide here: https://bit.ly/2DFopZC.

Power Apps Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (August 2020) Power Apps Licensing Guide.

The main change is clarification that the Power Apps per app/per user licences do not include RPA functionality for which a separate purchase of Power Automate per user with attended RPA plan is required.

As usual, find the details of all of the changes in the Change Log on page 24, and get the updated guide itself here: https://bit.ly/3kumMyF.

Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (August 2020) Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide with two main changes.

The first is for the rebranding of Forms Pro to Dynamics 365 Customer Voice – find more info on our blog here: https://bit.ly/3abDtu0 – and the second is for the release of the new Dynamics 365 Sales Premium bundle, an offer combining Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Dynamics 365 Sales Insights at a price of $135 per user per month, a saving of $10 over buying the applications separately.

Find the updated Licensing Guide here: https://bit.ly/33L0IK4.

Dynamics 365 Sales Premium

Microsoft release a new offering called Dynamics 365 Sales Premium. It’s a single user licence for  Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Dynamics 365 Sales Insights at a price of $135 per user per month, a saving of $10 over buying the applications separately.

Find Dynamics 365 Sales Premium listed here with all of its fellow Dynamics 365 Sales family members: https://bit.ly/31yHuEO.

Forms Pro is rebranded as Dynamics 365 Customer Voice

Microsoft announce that Forms Pro is rebranded as Dynamics 365 Customer Voice, an enterprise feedback management solution. There are templates to help users get started on gathering feedback and the ability to analyse feedback and act on it.

There are no changes to the licensing – customers with Enterprise flavours of Dynamics 365 licences have 2,000 survey responses included per tenant per month, and Office 365 users can buy an add-on for the same capacity. Existing customers don’t need to do anything – current surveys in Forms Pro are moved to Dynamics 365 Customer Voice.

Find an overview of a Customer Voice solution here: https://bit.ly/2X3PZGj.

Expanded use rights for Azure Hybrid Benefit with SQL Server

Microsoft announce some expanded use rights for the Azure Hybrid Benefit with SQL Server giving additional flexibility in using Standard and Enterprise Core licences for Azure IaaS and PaaS solutions.

SQL Server Standard Core licences may now be used for SQL Server Enterprise virtual machines with 4 Core licences required for each virtual core, and SQL Server Enterprise Core licences may now be used for SQL Server Standard virtual machines with 1 Core licence covering 4 virtual cores.

There are similar changes for the licence requirements for the Azure Data Factory SQL Server Integration Services Standard/Enterprise, and SQL Server Standard Core licences may now also be used for Azure SQL Database Business Critical solutions with a requirement of 4 Core licences to cover a virtual core.

You can find the announcement article here: https://bit.ly/2PlP6oh and find the official documentation on pages 54/55  of the August 2020 Product Terms document: http://bit.ly/MSproductterms.

Power Apps Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (July 2020) Power Apps Licensing Guide.

There are just minor adjustments, such as updating for the name changes of some of the Office 365 and Microsoft 365 plans.

Find the updated guide here: https://bit.ly/3hJhDjJ and check out the Change Log on page 24 for the full list of changes.

Reserved Capacity available for Azure DB for PostgreSQL- Hyperscale (Citus)

Microsoft extend the Reservations family again with the availability of Reserved Capacity for the compute power of Hyperscale (Citus) server groups.

As you may expect there are one and three-year Reserved Capacity options available with savings of up to 45% and 65% respectively.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/300NwOZ, and find out more about this new Reserved Capacity option here: https://bit.ly/3jJLydq.