Power Platform Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (February 2022) Power Platform Licensing Guide. There aren’t major changes, just the rebranding of Power Apps and Power Automate Capacity Add-ons to Power Platform Requests Add-ons. You can find the updated guide here: https://bit.ly/3I1DTms.

Power Platform Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (June 2021) Power Platform Licensing Guide.

There are just two minor updates, the first being that the availability of the Power Apps Portals login Tier 3 Add-on is no longer just restricted to CSP, and secondly, Process Advisor is added.

Process Advisor helps organisations decide which parts of their processes it would be best to automate, and it’s licensed via a Power Automate per User licence – you can find out more about Process Advisor here: https://bit.ly/3g1GotB, and the updated Power Platform Licensing Guide here: https://bit.ly/2Rv0KSx.

Power Apps Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (March 2021) Power Apps Licensing Guide.

The main change is the inclusion of rights to Power Automate within Windows licences via the Power Automate Desktop product, and there’s a useful table added on page 16 which gives a summary of the Power Automate use rights included in different licences.

Find out more about the Power Automate Desktop product on our blog here: http://bit.ly/30uS0Nc, and download the latest Licensing Guide here: https://bit.ly/3ekVWbE.

Power Automate Desktop

Microsoft announce that Power Automate Desktop is now available to Windows 10 users at no additional cost.

It’s a free download and enables users to automate tasks by recording actions such as mouse and keyboard clicks across multiple applications, and then replaying them when needed. Users who then want to share flows across an organisation and to take advantage of additional capabilities will need to be licensed with a Power Automate with Attended RPA user licence.

This currently costs $40 per user per month, but there’s a promotion beginning on 1 April, 2021 where the licence (as long as a minimum of 5,000 are purchased) will only cost $15 per user per month until 30 September, 2021.

Find the announcement with links to download Power Automate Desktop and to access further information, here: http://bit.ly/2PLXLE7.

New Power Platform partner website

Microsoft launch a new site to help partners find resources around the Power Platform products.

There are pages for each of the products – Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents – with a comprehensive set of resources for each, as well as information on programs such as Catalyst and FastTrack which help customers realise value from Microsoft solutions.

There’s also help on building a Power Platform practice and links to training resources and other useful sites such as the Business Applications Microsoft Partner Community and the Power Platform blog.

Find the announcement here: http://bit.ly/39UfX4O, and the site itself here: http://bit.ly/3ocNRqD.

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.

RPA Licensing Brief

Microsoft launched their Robotic Process Automation (RPA) capability in April, 2020. As a reminder, RPA helps users to automate tasks by recording actions to be played back later, either with human interaction (known as “attended”) or without (“unattended”). if you want to find out more about this capability, then there’s a new (April 2020) Licensing Brief which directs you to RPA documentation and resources, and includes a number of FAQs with a full section dedicated to licensing and pricing questions.

Find this Licensing Brief here: https://bit.ly/RPVPowAutApr2020

Robotic Process Automation availability

Microsoft announce that Robotic Process Automation (RPA) capability is available from 2 April, 2020. RPA helps users to automate tasks by recording actions to be played back later, either with human interaction (known as “attended”) or without (“unattended”).

There are two new licences to support this functionality: a Power Automate per user plan with attended RPA at $40 per user per month, and an Unattended RPA Add-on at $150 per bot per month which must be added on to the Attended plan or a Power Automate per flow plan.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/34uD4A0, along with examples of RPA in action and an overview video.

General Availability of Microsoft Power Virtual Agents

Microsoft announce the General Availability of Microsoft Power Virtual Agents. This offering allows the creation of chatbots using a guided, no-code graphical interface, which can be further enhanced by building custom workflows with Power Automate, or by using the Microsoft Bot Framework for more complex scenarios.

From a licensing perspective, it’s licensed per tenant at a cost of $1,000 for 2,000 chatbot sessions a month, with an add-on available for a further 1,000 sessions at $450 per month. In addition, there’s a 60-day trial available. Find the announcement here: http://bit.ly/2qLkMe6.

Dynamics 365 Mixed Reality Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (December 2019) Dynamics 365 Mixed Reality Licensing Guide. There aren’t major changes, just the renaming of PowerApps and Flow to Power Apps and Power Automate, and you can find this guide here: http://bit.ly/MixRealDecLG2019.