Reminder: Action required to assign Microsoft A3 Faculty Licences

[Lydia Kronawetter]

Kia ora koutou, 

*Topline: action need to assign A3 licences in the Microsoft 365 Admin Centre*

Datacom and our Microsoft licensing centre have successfully processed 95% of the Microsoft A3 Faculty licences, as part of the Schools’ Agreement between Microsoft and the Ministry of Education.

As there has been a change in product name since the previous 2019 – 2021 agreement, there is a step you will need to take to assign the licences in your Microsoft 365 Admin Centre.

Product change:

Previous description: Office 365 A3 for Faculty
New description: Microsoft 365 A3 for Faculty

*Note: Windows 10/11 is included within the Microsoft 365 A3 for Faculty License. The product is no longer a separate line item in the Microsoft 365 admin centre.*

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Action required (part A + B) by school or IT partner on behalf of school:

 You can assign Microsoft 365 A3 Licences to users either:

• Manually – Works best with small numbers
• Or, Group based licensing in the Azure Active Directory Portal
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/fundamentals/active-directory-licensing-whatis-azure-portal

 For the manual method:

A3 Faculty Licences

 Part A) Remove users who have been assigned an ‘Office 365 A3 for Faculty’ Licence

 Steps:

1. Log into the Microsoft 365 admin centre
2. Click ‘Billing’
3. Click ‘Your Products’
4. Click ‘Office 365 A3 for Faculty’
5. Click ‘Assign Licenses’
6. Click the box next to the user’s names (box will turn blue)
7. Click ‘Unassign Licenses’

 Part B) Assign users with the ‘Microsoft 365 A3 for Faculty’ Licence

 Steps:

1. Log into the Microsoft 365 admin centre
2. Click ‘Billing’
3. Click ‘Your Products’
4. Click ‘Microsoft 365 A3 for Faculty’
5. Click ‘Assign Licenses’

 A3 Students Licences

 No action required. Product name Office 365 A3 for Students has not changed.

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These A3 assignment instructions are attached for ease of sharing, as well as information about Microsoft’s grace period when licences expire. Schools have 90 days from 31st December 2021 before deprovisioning (limiting of services occur) but we strongly recommend that you action these steps immediately.

A5 Licences

 If you have requested A5 licensing, you will still need to first assign A3 licensing to your school tenant. All A5 requests are currently being reviewed by the Ministry and will be approved / processed over the coming two weeks. If you would like to request A5 licensing for your school, please submit your request via this form.  If you would like to know more about how A5 licensing can provide greater security to your schools’ online environment, please book a session with one of Microsoft’s security experts here.

Please email nzsc...@datacom.co.nz for further assistance with your licensing if needed. 

Ngā mihi nui,

Lydia Kronawetter
Microsoft Aotearoa

[Sam McNeill]

Further to Lydia's comment,

The new M365 A3 is the "unified SKU"  that replaces the three separate SKU in the earlier agreement. Lydia mentioned two (O365 A3 and Windows A3) but there is a third you're most likely familiar with: Enterprise Mobility & Security E3. This is also now included in the unified SKU of M365 A3.

EMS is particularly important from an MDM perspective as that is the Intune license as well as then Azure AD Premium license.

Helpfully, the Minecraft:EE license is also included in the Unified SKU so you assign the single student to Faculty/Student in question (Group Based License is best way as Lydia said) but you can still turn on/off the individual licenses/functionality if you wish:

Hope this helps,

Sam

[Simon Phelon]

Nice.

With a bit of luck Microsoft has turned off licence renewal allerts for this new SKU so we dont get those rather ominous emails being sent to the Principal each year.

[Matt Strickland]

My A5 licences turned up yesterday.

I notice the student A5 is called "Microsoft 365 A5 for students use benefit"

Does anyone know what faculty staff are eligible for licenses?

Teacher Aides? Permanent support staff like Nurses, Counsellors? Are Interpreters included?

I usually give those we don't make a device available A1 licenses, but for both student and faculty I find the renewed/projected license count too low, at least for the start of the year.

I again will need to ask for more student licenses as the renewal has reset to a 'projected'? number.

Matt

[te...@whs.ac.nz]

We had this issue last time - was told only eligible teachers were able to be assigned A3 staff.

Teacher aides, office staff, grounds staff and so on who all relied on outlook desktop app were forced off unless we purchased additional A3 licenses.

Pretty bizarre needing the 2 different systems within one environment and certainly required retraining of staff and some awkward conversations with them as to why they were not able to use the same tools as their colleagues

In addition, i can see we currently have 1477 students, yet only 1467 licenses, so again, this will be an issue.

Doesnt look like this position has changed either. The strict numbers is a PITA when we arent in control of them, as mentioned, especially during the start of the year as new students are arriving

[Pete Mundy]

On Friday, January 28, 2022 at 10:42 AM UTC+13 techies-f...@googlegroups.com wrote:

> Teacher aides, office staff, grounds staff and so on who all relied on outlook desktop app were forced off unless we purchased additional A3 licenses.

Clear evidence that the New Zealand tax payer is getting excellent value for money from the collective agreement!


<crickets>


*cough*