Author Archives: Louise Ulrick

Changes to Office/Microsoft 365 and Teams

In October 2023, Microsoft made changes to Office 365 and Microsoft 365 licences for customers in the EEA and Switzerland. Essentially, these changes removed Teams from certain suites for customers who had never purchased Office/Microsoft 365 before. You can get up to speed on that on our blog here.

Now, from 1April, 2024 those changes are extended to the rest of the world, described by Microsoft in an article here. In essence, the news is the same as for the EEA and Switzerland, so here’s the summary:

A customer outside the EEA and Switzerland who has not purchased Office 365 E1/E3/E5 or Microsoft 365 E3/E5 before 1 April, 2024 must now buy “(no Teams)” SKUs – which, as the names suggest, don’t include Teams. If the customer does want Teams, then they need to additionally purchase a separate Teams Enterprise User SL for their users. If they HAVE purchased any of the original licences before 1 April then they can add more licences and renew existing Subscriptions. Alternatively they can buy the new licences, and even mix and match them with the new licences if they want to.

For Microsoft 365 Business Basic/Standard/Premium, customers in the affected regions will be able to choose the original offerings that include Teams or the new (no Teams) flavours. The same goes for Microsoft 365 F1/F3 and Office 365 F3.

This site, aimed at partners, has a lot of additional resources that might be useful.

Copilot for Security

Microsoft announce that Copilot for Security will be generally available on April 1st, 2024.

If you’re not sure how Copilot fits in with security then this video (https://bit.ly/3VBv5h5) is a good minute-long overview of AI-powered security.

Customers will be able to choose a standalone Copilot experience or an embedded one (find a good diagram on the announcement page here: https://bit.ly/3TV4Qkf) and both will be billed on a consumption model. It’s all going to work via a new Security Compute Unit (SCU) which costs $4/hour billed, as usual, against an existing or new Azure Subscription.

Microsoft 365 Enterprise Licensing Guide

There’s a new (February 2024) Microsoft 365 Enterprise Licensing Guide which we’ve added to our amazing emporium of Licensing Guides (https://bit.ly/MSLicensingGuides). It looks like this document has been updated for the changes to From SA licences from 1 February, 2024 (see our blog here: https://bit.ly/3IUJqxl) but really truly a poor job has been done with too many errors and chunks of out-of-date information.

For those who like a complete set of Microsoft’s documentation, find this guide here: https://bit.ly/499rSZf.

Licence auto-claim for Power Automate

Microsoft announce that licence auto-claim for Power Automate is generally available. This is a feature that enables administrators to set up policies in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center to automatically assign licences to users who need them.

Find the announcement article with instructions on how to create the policies here: https://bit.ly/4aevB95.

Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (March 2024) Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide with just a few minor changes. On pages 4/5 the Base and Attach licences table is updated, removing Field Service Contractor, Guides, and Remote Assist since these never qualify as Base licences. In addition, the capacities for Supply Chain Management on page 31 are updated to include Electronic Invoicing and Intelligent Order Management.

Find this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/48ChAjY.

Microsoft 365 plan comparison documents

There are updated (March 2024) Microsoft 365 plan comparison documents with the new components of the Intune Suite added (see our blog: https://bit.ly/3PBpkMz).

These useful documents tell you which (of the many) different components are included in which Office 365/Microsoft 365 plan, and there’s a table for SMB customers (https://bit.ly/49TclOh), and one for Enterprise customers (https://bit.ly/496ATly), and still more for EEA customers – one for SMB (https://bit.ly/43uZqiY) and the final one for Enterprise (https://bit.ly/3vluC7T).

Microsoft Intune Suite components

Microsoft add three more components of the Intune Suite to the February and March 2024 Product Terms site (https://bit.ly/3PyB7Lq). They’re also available as Add-ons to Intune Plan 1 as a User Subscription Licence: Advanced Analytics ($5/month), Enterprise Application Management ($2/per month) and Microsoft Cloud PKI ($2/month).

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/4a9w8cv, and pricing and product information here: https://bit.ly/3Tq6hpu.

Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (February 2024) Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide. Finance Premium and Field Service Contractor licenses are added to the Base and Attach licenses table on pages 4 and 5, and Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service offerings are added to page 31. Find this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/4btOjuv.

Power Platform Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (February 2024) Power Platform Licensing Guide. The main change is the addition of Copilot Studio in Copilot for Microsoft 365; if you’re licensed for Copilot for Microsoft 365 then you can create, manage, and publish plugins from Copilot Studio to Copilot for Microsoft 365. Find this new guide here: https://bit.ly/4byhCfu.

Microsoft 365 plan comparison documents

There are updated (February 2024) Microsoft 365 plan comparison documents where Power Virtual Agents is replaced by Copilot Studio.

These useful documents tell you which (of the many) different components are included in which Office 365/Microsoft 365 plan, and there’s a table for SMB customers (https://bit.ly/4bm9crn), one for Enterprise customers (https://bit.ly/3HQRFtG), one for Education customers (https://bit.ly/3OwHkH8) and still more for EEA customers – one for SMB (https://bit.ly/3SpfihV) and the final one for Enterprise (https://bit.ly/42tUo5O).