Effectively Managing Office 365 licenses is one of the most significant tasks for any administrator. While the Microsoft 365 admin center is a viable tool for license management, it can become complex in larger organizations. In such cases, there is a necessity to automate the process of assigning new licenses to users who require them and revoking licenses from those who no longer need them. Group-based licensing emerges as the optimal solution for automating license assignments for Azure AD Users.
Specmasoft’s Office 365 Manager is a desktop application designed for Microsoft 365 License management; helps you assign group-based licensing for users in bulk. You can use the tool to add users to a group and add a license to the group, which will then be automatically applied to all the group members. The tool also features a variety of built-in reports, providing you with a comprehensive view of users with licenses assigned directly and users with licenses assigned through groups.
- Group-based licensing requirements
- Add Users in Bulk to a License Assignment Group
- Steps to Assign or Remove Microsoft 365 Licenses in Group
- Inventory Report of Group and User License Assignments
Group-based licensing requirements
- Licenses can only be assigned to security groups and security-enabled Microsoft 365 groups. Assigning a license to a Microsoft 365 group is not possible if the group is created without the security-enabled feature. The security groups can either be synchronized from on-premises or created as cloud-only security groups within Azure AD.
- Requires the Azure AD Premium P1 license and above.
- Requires the Microsoft 365 Business Premium or Office 365 Enterprise E3 or Office 365 A3 or Office 365 GCC G3 or Office 365 E3 for GCCH or Office 365 E3 for DOD and above.
- It is necessary to ensure that you have enough available license units to cover all the group members. For instance, if there are 1000 users within the licensed group, the selected license must have a minimum of 1000 available units to meet the licensing requirement.
- To learn more information about the features and requirements of group-based licensing, please refer to this document: Group-based licensing in Microsoft Entra ID.
Add Users in Bulk to a License Assignment Group
Follow the below steps to add the necessary users as members to the group for which you intend to assign licenses.
As previously mentioned, group-based licensing is exclusively supported with security groups or security feature-enabled Microsoft 365 groups. Therefore, you should choose an existing group or create a new one before proceeding with the following steps.
- Launch the UI console of the Office 365 Manager app.
- Go to the Azure AD page.
- Navigate to the Security Groups tab, and in the report picker, select the All Security Enabled Groups report. This will provide a list of all groups eligible for group-based licensing.
- Search for and select the group to which you want to add members from the report grid.
- In the Update Members section, click the Add Members button to open the Add Security Group Members action UI.
- In the action UI, select the users you intend to add as members for the selected group.
- Click the Update button, then click OK to confirm and initiate the membership update action.
Steps to Assign or Remove Microsoft 365 Licenses in Group
Follow these steps to assign, re-assign, or remove licenses within a Microsoft 365 Group or Security Group using this tool.
- Open the UI console of the Office 365 Manager app if it’s not already active.
- Go to the Azure AD page.
- Navigate to the License tab.
- Click the Update Group License button to open the action UI.
- Search and select the group to which you want to manage licenses, then click the Next button.
- Now, you can choose the necessary licenses for assignment to the selected group. If you wish to remove or free up a license from the group, uncheck the already selected license.
- Click the Update button to start the license modification process for the group.
Inventory Report of Microsoft 365 Group and User License Assignments
In addition to group and user license management capabilities, the tool also offers extensive insights into Office 365 license assignments. You can generate reports that include details on licensed users, users with licenses assigned via groups, users with licenses assigned directly, users with specific licenses, users with a specific license assigned through a group, and more.
Follow the steps below to generate various license reports from different perspectives and compare their content to gain a comprehensive overview of license assignments.
- Open the UI console of the Office 365 Manager app if it’s not already active.
- Go to the Azure AD page.
- Navigate to the License tab. In the report picker, select the report you wish to generate (e.g., “Users with group assigned licenses”). This action will display the report content within the grid.
- Next, choose another report you’d like to generate (e.g., “Users with directly assigned license”). This will populate the report in a new tab view.
- In a similar manner, you can create multiple report views and compare the content of the reports to gain a comprehensive understanding of the license assignments.
