Office 365 ProPlus free for staff from 1st dec 2014

[Marshall_IT]

Students and teachers: You may be eligible to get Office for free! | Office Blogs

 

Just came across this link. This will allow you all to use your office for iPad apps in edit mode for all your staff as well as allowing them to download and install a version at home for free.

 

This is slightly annoying for me as I've recently purchased an A3 sub for all my staff with iPads. I bought the A3 sub as I wanted to use some of the other options but looking at this now I think I'll downgrade the number of A3 licences and just use the free ProPlus for most staff. Just keeping A3 for key staff including SLT.

[Boredguy]

Woohoo!!

 

This should make the staff who have iPads happy and at the same time annoy the staff who have just paid to get Office via HUP

[Cache]

Blog post here: New Office 365 ProPlus benefit for students and faculty/staff - Microsoft Education in the Cloud - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

 

I don't understand part of it though, in that do I still need to licence through Student Advantage if I'm doing it that way already or do I/can I switch over to the new way? @jamesbmarshall @EduTech possibly provide a hint?

[jamesbmarshall]

Good question - don't know off the top of my head, will have to go away and ask!

[EduTech]

Hi,

 

I just want to point out here that this method of sign up is available for students and staff (In December 2014) whom currently DO NOT use Office 365 already, It allows them to obtain access to this without the IT Admin having to get involved. If you already have a Office 365 tenant with your vanity domain name verified in it then when students attempt to do this it will point them in the direction of the login portal where they shall be asked to sign in, if they don't know there credentials they will be asked to contact the IT Admin.

 

I would encourage you guys to read this: https://support.office.com/Article/Student-Advantage-Friction-Free-Technical-FAQ-7fb1b2f9-94c2-4cbb-b01e-a6eca34261d6?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US#BKMK_ManageTenantProcess

 

You need be aware that if your students use a different domain namespace to your staff, and the students domain namespace isn't verified in the existing Office 365 tenant [which maybe you use for staff] it will automatically go ahead and create a new tenant for the students (which could be bad) especially if you plan to bring them in to Office 365 at some point in the future. {although I am currently discussing this particular scenario in the background}

 

What changed with the launch of Office 365 Education for Students?

 

As announced in December 2013, academic institutions that license Office for faculty and staff can provide access to Office 365 ProPlus for students at no additional cost. We listened to the challenges that academic institutions encountered in providing this benefit to students and simplified the process: eligible students can now sign up for Office 365 ProPlus directly from Microsoft by using their school-specific email address (that is, the address that includes a school identifier).

 

You shouldn't be paying for Student Licenses from what I understand.

 

James.

[Cache]

No, we don't pay for Student Licences at the moment, however we had to place an order through our VL Agreement supplier, which then added a key to our VLSC account which I then needed to add to Office 365.

 

The question was really if I can skip out the placing an order, getting a key and adding it to Office 365, then it simplifies it a hell of a lot and I would like to switch to it

[Marshall_IT]

No, we don't pay for Student Licences at the moment, however we had to place an order through our VL Agreement supplier, which then added a key to our VLSC account which I then needed to add to Office 365.

 

The question was really if I can skip out the placing an order, getting a key and adding it to Office 365, then it simplifies it a hell of a lot and I would like to switch to it

 

I agree with this entirely, these extra steps took a long time for me. It was Bieber in the gold rush on first release do no one really knew what they were doing... Might be a lot more stream lined now.

 

But a way to skip this step would be appreciated.

[Cache]

Good question - don't know off the top of my head, will have to go away and ask!

 

Realise it's still a little way off but with half term approaching, it won't be long before I need to start considering our renewal order for the Student Advantage. Any word on whether we can switch or we need to stick with it @jamesbmarshall?

[Zoom7000]

@jamesbmarshall - Will this be available for users on LGfL London Mail?

 

My staff use LGfL Staff Mail which isn't Office 365 based, so, in theory, could I just sign my school up for free Office 365 A2?

[jamesbmarshall]

@jamesbmarshall - Will this be available for users on LGfL London Mail?

 

My staff use LGfL Staff Mail which isn't Office 365 based, so, in theory, could I just sign my school up for free Office 365 A2?

 

You'll need to speak with LGfL on that one I'm afraid!

[Marshall_IT]

@jamesbmarshall - Will this be available for users on LGfL London Mail?

 

My staff use LGfL Staff Mail which isn't Office 365 based, so, in theory, could I just sign my school up for free Office 365 A2?

 

There's a new method where staff and students can request their own licenses and you need to do a lot less management. I can't remember if this is in the link too but it's rolling out at the same time i believe.

[tj2419]

Anyone heard anymore about this? How to register etc?

[Sylv3r]

I spoke to our normal reseller today and he was going to check for me, the one thing Microsoft don't do that the likes of Apple do is really promote this type of thing. If it had been a feature just added to the next version of IOS we wouldn't have heard the end of it.

[Boredguy]

Spoke to my reseller and provided our license requirement in the same manner as when we originally licensed the students since the self signup for users seems to not meet our current deployment methods.

[synaesthesia]

Trying to get our heads round this one. We are eligable, having EES OVS. However, our Office 365 is an E1 subscription provided (well, sort of, as it's free) via our Academy, and all email addresses are on that. That obviously isn't eligable. Asking our licensing provider if it's at all possible to "link" them to allow students to sign up with their normal email address.

[Cache]

I emailed our reseller this morning and asked them to find out how we go about getting the licence keys as there doesn't seem to be any detail about creating the Self Enrollment keys/linking to an OVS-ES agreement

[Zoom7000]

Perhaps @jamesbmarshall could enlighten us on how our teachers can sign up for this?

[tj2419]

Spoke to my reseller and he said they had been told it would run a similar way to the student version, where you 'order' free licences and then have to register your establishment. But waiting for him to get back to me as he said Microsoft hadn't released final information yet. Want to get it sorted before christmas and the rush of people asking how they can get office.

[the_dude]

Here's how it worked for us, Microsoft added 500,000 licenses for staff (Office 365 Education for Faculty this includes proplus). They also added 1,000,000 for students in addition to the ones that we got from our reseller last year.

 

Users can auto-register on their own by following this procedure:

 

 

1. www.office.com/teachers
   
2. Click the green button
   
3. Staff/Faculty inputs email:
   
4. Staff/Faculty checks email for further instructions to login:
   

The above procedure is what our Microsoft rep sent us, however this seems a bit convoluted. So I'm going to assign there licenses with powershell, here is my script if anyone else wants to use or modify it:

 

$users = get-content c:\scripts\proplusfaculty\faculty.txt

 

ForEach ($User in $Users)

{

Set-MsolUserLicense -UserPrincipalName $User'@oside.us' -removelicense "YOURDOMAIN:STANDARDWOFFPACK_FACULTY"

Set-MsolUserLicense -UserPrincipalName $User'@oside.us' -addlicenses "YOURDOMAIN:STANDARDWOFFPACK_IW_FACULTY"

set-mailboxregionalconfiguration -identity [email protected] -language en-US

set-mailboxregionalconfiguration -identity [email protected] -timezone "Pacific Standard Time"

 

}

#end Script

 

Once assigned users click on the gear and go to Office 365 settings >> software.

 

cheers.

Edited December 2, 2014 by the_dude
add more info

[Arthur]

I get this.

 

[drewp]

Here's how it worked for us, Microsoft added 500,000 licenses for staff (Office 365 Education for Faculty this includes proplus). They also added 1,000,000 for students in addition to the ones that we got from our reseller last year.

.

 

Did this happen automatically for you, or did you have to get your reseller to do something before the Office 365 Education for Faculty/Students licences appeared?

[Steve21]

I get this.

 

 

Same same Silly MS hate UK again it seems!

 

Even trying to manual add them costs:

 

Office 365 ProPlus for Faculty £1.70 Per user license, per month

Office 365 ProPlus for Students £1.27 Per user license, per month

 

Steve

Edited December 3, 2014 by Steve21

[Zoom7000]

I just checked and I get the same message as @Arthur

[sonofsanta]

Getting the same message, but my reading of it was that we asked our reseller for free licences as with the student one. Asked mine yesterday, just waiting for an answer... because this'd be a sight less faff than putting all the Home Use Program transactions through my school procurement card.

[Zoom7000]

Do we need Office 365 at our school to qualify? From my reading of the initial blog post, it appeared that we didn't need Office 365 in order for the teachers/staff to self register.