Description

Problem

Microsoft 365 is a crucial productivity suite - but it is also an expensive one. One way to curb Microsoft 365 licensing costs is by assigning the right license to the right users. However, that is easier said than done as it can be very complex to gain visibility into who has which license and assess if they genuinely need it. This lack of clarity in license utilization leads to significant hidden and unnecessary costs to the organization.

In addition, the actual process of detecting different licensing models, verifying the need for an E5 license, asking employees' consent for license reclaim, and subsequently changing the license can be a very manual, time-consuming, and frustrating process for IT teams.

Solution

Orchestrate the E5 to E3 licensing optimization process to drastically save time from the manual license reclaim process and reduce costs from unnecessarily assigned licenses. This is possible through a fully automated workflow that detects users with a E5 license, asks for license reclaim permission, and changes the licensing model to E3 within Entra ID.

A good indicator of which employees to target is by looking at their Power BI Pro consumption, as it is based on real user activity. The Power BI application in this library pack allows you to detect the no-usage of Power BI, which can then be selected/filtered by groups of devices for more granular targeting. This application can also be configured through software metering to get a longer usage trend to rely on. You can then set more accurate triggers and schedules for your workflow.

Key features

• Fully orchestrated process to simplify and accelerate Microsoft 365 license management process.
• Remove the unnecessary Microsoft 365 licensing cost at scale.
• Use of software metering information as a detection mechanism to look at 90 days' worth of Microsoft Power BI usage data.
• Option to keep users involved for transparency, awareness, and ensure approval.
• API call to Entra ID to modify a user's group assignment.

Screenshots