Microsoft announce that the free Microsoft 365 Business Premium and Office 365 E1 licences will be discontinued for non-profit customers from 1 July, 2025. There’s a blog article here: https://bit.ly/4mrgyPY to help customers move to Microsoft 365 Business Basic, where the grant of 300 free licences remains, and there’s a partner FAQ here: https://bit.ly/4mqobpC.
Tag Archives: Microsoft 365 Business Basic
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.
Microsoft Teams Essentials
Microsoft introduce Teams Essentials, a standalone Teams offering aimed at small businesses.
It’s $4 per user per month available through CSP partners or directly from Microsoft’s website and allows unlimited group meetings for up to 30 hours with up to 300 participants.
This site is useful for seeing how Teams Essentials compares to other plans aimed at smaller businesses such as Microsoft 365 Business Basic and Standard: https://bit.ly/31LrCSX.
Find the Teams Essentials announcement here: https://bit.ly/3pF2plr, and resources for partners selling Teams solutions here: https://bit.ly/3rJOSvB.