Office 365 A1 Plus for faculty licences missing!

[CommodoreS]

Our school is missing "Office 365 A1 Plus for faculty" licences on its Office 365 account.

 

We have been in contact with other schools which have automatically had these licences added by Microsoft.

 

We logged a ticket with Microsoft who have been completely unhelpful on this. They told us to contact Volume Licencing which we did who have passed it back to Office 365 support.

 

Can anyone please help and tell me who I need to contact about getting the "Office 365 A1 Plus for faculty" licences added and what I need to tell them, as I am just getting nowhere on this one.

[Steve21]

The normal ones (not pro plus) you'll get a key as part of your volume licensing. If you log into your portal and check activation services is it showing in there? if so there's option to turn on the licenses in o365, if not you'd need to talk to whoever did your ovs etc

 

Steve

[Matt_Renato]

Are you able to add these licenses yourself?

 

If you log into the Office 365 admin portal and select Billing > Purchase Services can you see the A1 licenses there?

[sparkeh]

@CommodoreS did you solve this? I am in the same boat and MS aren't really helping.

[CommodoreS]

I spent\wasted a lot of time trying to get this resolved and got absolutely nowhere so gave up trying. Support from all parties I contacted were just blaming the other party and I got nowhere as a result ended up going in circles. In the end someone said they would get back to me regarding it, but never did and then as always something else came up that needed to be sorted.

 

If you find anything more out yourself (or a quick answer\solution) please let me know.

[localzuk]

There isn't an A1 Plus license as far as I know.

 

There are:

 

Office 365 A1 for faculty

Office 365 A1 for students

Office 365 ProPlus for faculty

Office 365 ProPlus for faculty

 

The A1 licenses are added by the Office 365 team when you sign up for it.

 

The ProPlus licenses are added by you, via the VLSC when you have them added to your OVS-ES license agreement (for free, when you are buying Office already).

[sparkeh]

There isn't an A1 Plus license as far as I know.

 

There are:

 

Office 365 A1 for faculty

Office 365 A1 for students

Office 365 ProPlus for faculty

Office 365 ProPlus for faculty

 

The A1 licenses are added by the Office 365 team when you sign up for it.

 

The ProPlus licenses are added by you, via the VLSC when you have them added to your OVS-ES license agreement (for free, when you are buying Office already).

@localzuk Yep, there is

 

From: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/office-365-education-self-sign-up-technical-faq-7fb1b2f9-94c2-4cbb-b01e-a6eca34261d6?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

From: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt844095.aspx

 

Its the licence that our C2R installation is asking for.

Also MS support are working out why there aren't appearing for us.

Edited July 11, 2018 by sparkeh

[snagrat]

A1 Plus is a combination of A1 and ProPlus incorporated as one license.

 

It’s great when you get it but the only thing I can tell that it gives you over the A1/ProPlus combo is Device Based Activation

[sparkeh]

A1 Plus is a combination of A1 and ProPlus incorporated as one license.

 

It’s great when you get it but the only thing I can tell that it gives you over the A1/ProPlus combo is Device Based Activation

Exactly why we need them!

[snagrat]

I would advise emailing [email protected] if you haven’t already and they can provide you with the correct steps to get A1 Plus.

 

It may mean doing extra work to get you approved but they have helped me with many customers

[sparkeh]

I would advise emailing [email protected] if you haven’t already and they can provide you with the correct steps to get A1 Plus.

 

It may mean doing extra work to get you approved but they have helped me with many customers

Thanks, is that a support channel?

I am waiting for a callback from MS so if that doesn't go anywhere I'll be firing them an email

[sparkeh]

Well I finally managed to get this sorted and the licences have appeared.

 

The only advice I can give is that if you are eligible (have an volume agreement for Office) then you have to be persistent with 365 support. By persistent I mean make a complete PITA of yourself until your ticket is picked up by someone who has a clue about 365 licensing and what needs to be in place. For me it took weeks of daily phone calls to MS, being shouty and lodging a complaint about someone who refused to help and got quite rude with me.

 

After the complaint the ticket was escalated to some one who fixed it in 5 mins by adding us to the approved academic institution list (which we had been told we were on but weren’t). Apparently this should have been done by all the people that handled the ticket but were more interested in trying to pass me on to another department or close it.

 

I then used the self sign up for a student and a teacher and the licences appeared.

Edited August 2, 2018 by sparkeh

[PotNoodleTech]

Well I finally managed to get this sorted and the licences have appeared.

 

The only advice I can give is that if you are eligible (have an volume agreement for Office) then you have to be persistent with 365 support. By persistent I mean make a complete PITA of yourself until your ticket is picked up by someone who has a clue about 365 licensing and what needs to be in place. For me it took weeks of daily phone calls to MS, being shouty and lodging a complaint about someone who refused to help and got quite rude with me.

 

After the complaint the ticket was escalated to some one who fixed it in 5 mins by adding us to the approved academic institution list (which we had been told we were on but weren’t). Apparently this should have been done by all the people that handled the ticket but were more interested in trying to pass me on to another department or close it.

 

I then used the self sign up for a student and a teacher and the licences appeared.

 

It's about time Microsoft really stepped up their Office 365 support to schools. It may be "freee" but it is a key service if you are using it for staff communication. It's no wonder they are haemorrhaging users over to Google services.

 

I often look at my "google estate" and wonder why I am bothering still running Office365.

 

Stories like all of the above, reinforce my gut feeling on future direction is correct.

Edited August 2, 2018 by PotNoodleTech

[CommodoreS]

It's about time Microsoft really stepped up their Office 365 support to schools. It may be "freee" but it is a key service if you are using it for staff communication. It's no wonder they are haemorrhaging users over to Google services.

 

I often look at my "google estate" and wonder why I am bothering still running Office365.

 

Stories like all of the above, reinforce my gut feeling on future direction is correct.

 

I guess you have never had a problem with Google, where you have then tried to contact a human being working there?

If you do manage to get through to someone (and they reply) then their replies are generally quite rude and arrogant and not what you want to hear. No customer service at all, and they just don't want to communicate on a human being level.

 

At least Microsoft does have someone you can phone to talk to, even though they are generally in a foreign country who cant understand what you are saying (and you cant understand them either) and do not have enough training to deal with resolving your request. Sadly, not all of us have two weeks to get this kind of thing sorted, which should not take two weeks of hassle and aggro to get sorted.

[sparkeh]

I guess you have never had a problem with Google, where you have then tried to contact a human being working there?

If you do manage to get through to someone (and they reply) then their replies are generally quite rude and arrogant and not what you want to hear. No customer service at all, and they just don't want to communicate on a human being level.

 

At least Microsoft does have someone you can phone to talk to, even though they are generally in a foreign country who cant understand what you are saying (and you cant understand them either) and do not have enough training to deal with resolving your request. Sadly, not all of us have two weeks to get this kind of thing sorted, which should not take two weeks of hassle and aggro to get sorted.

Yeah, we used to use GAFE and trying to get support with them was worse, just speaking to someone was a Herculean task. At least with MS I can shout at someone until it gets fixed

[Primus]

Speaking to a human at Google is as easy as can be - ring their number listed on the admin console, enter the pin and go through one simple menu. Call answered by a human in under a minute every time I've needed to call.

[kcalderw]

Well I finally managed to get this sorted and the licences have appeared.

 

The only advice I can give is that if you are eligible (have an volume agreement for Office) then you have to be persistent with 365 support. By persistent I mean make a complete PITA of yourself until your ticket is picked up by someone who has a clue about 365 licensing and what needs to be in place. For me it took weeks of daily phone calls to MS, being shouty and lodging a complaint about someone who refused to help and got quite rude with me.

 

After the complaint the ticket was escalated to some one who fixed it in 5 mins by adding us to the approved academic institution list (which we had been told we were on but weren’t). Apparently this should have been done by all the people that handled the ticket but were more interested in trying to pass me on to another department or close it.

 

I then used the self sign up for a student and a teacher and the licences appeared.

 

I know this an older thread but I'm going through this exact process now. It's been almost 10 days since I started the support process. My vendors have been pretty supportive about trying to help me but unfortunately they don't have the ability to add the licenses so I've been going back and forth with MS Support. For those that might be interested this is the error you'll see IF you try DBA. Just for reference, we have A3 licensing.

[smarties11]

I know this an older thread but I'm going through this exact process now. It's been almost 10 days since I started the support process. My vendors have been pretty supportive about trying to help me but unfortunately they don't have the ability to add the licenses so I've been going back and forth with MS Support. For those that might be interested this is the error you'll see IF you try DBA. Just for reference, we have A3 licensing.

 

Hi,

 

Who did you contact at Microsoft?

 

I went through this process last year and e-mailed [email protected]. They were very quick, within 4 or 5 days they came back to say that our domain had been validated for A1 Plus, then I just had to take an unlicensed staff and student account via their sign up process and the licenses appeared immediately. Once the licenses were available, device based activation worked.

 

You still need to keep the [free] ProPlus licenses on your OVS agreement though as apparently they use that to determine your eligibility, or so I was told.

 

Hope this helps!

[kcalderw]

Hi,

 

Who did you contact at Microsoft?

 

I went through this process last year and e-mailed [email protected]. They were very quick, within 4 or 5 days they came back to say that our domain had been validated for A1 Plus, then I just had to take an unlicensed staff and student account via their sign up process and the licenses appeared immediately. Once the licenses were available, device based activation worked.

 

You still need to keep the [free] ProPlus licenses on your OVS agreement though as apparently they use that to determine your eligibility, or so I was told.

 

Hope this helps!

 

I finally got help from a sales consultant. Hoping the validation process goes quickly, and I can get back to it on Monday.

[Koldov]

I'm just over a month into my struggle in getting anyone at O365 support to understand their own product and licensing.... Although as it's Microsoft it doesn't suprise me, I'm not sure anyone on the planet really fully understands any of their licensing!

 

I have a long email chain already from O365 support, who finally suggested I try emailing o365edu, but no response so far - I will try m365edu and see what happens...

 

@kcalderw - you say you got help from a 'sales consultant'? As in a reseller?

 

Ours have been spectacularly unhelpful generally (when trying to get Pro Plus), but I've been led to believe the A1 Plus license is nothing to do with them...

[kcalderw]

I'm just over a month into my struggle in getting anyone at O365 support to understand their own product and licensing.... Although as it's Microsoft it doesn't suprise me, I'm not sure anyone on the planet really fully understands any of their licensing!

 

I have a long email chain already from O365 support, who finally suggested I try emailing o365edu, but no response so far - I will try m365edu and see what happens...

 

@kcalderw - you say you got help from a 'sales consultant'? As in a reseller?

 

Ours have been spectacularly unhelpful generally (when trying to get Pro Plus), but I've been led to believe the A1 Plus license is nothing to do with them...

 

That is true, the resellers have no way of adding that license. Basically you need to have your institution verified by MS as an "educational" institution. After that, you're able to add the licenses yourself.

[smarties11]

If it helps, the chap that helped me (via [email protected]) was called Ben Dylla. He was very efficient and knew what he was talking about. I have his direct e-mail address if anyone needs it - shoot me a PM.

[kcalderw]

Funny enough, that's who is helping me as well.

[Koldov]

For anyone else hitting this thread due to O365 support not knowing

 

After a month of emails.... One email to [email protected] and I had a reply within a couple of hours from THE MAN!

 

Hello,

 

I have added your domains to our list to be marked as eligible for the A1 Plus licenses. This process is sometimes needed since not all schools are automatically eligible for the A1 Plus licenses.

 

This process usually takes 3-5 days to complete. Once it is completed, you will be able to take an unlicensed email through our self-sign up site and that will cause the A1 Plus licenses to populate in your tenant.

 

I will be sure to pass along any updates as I receive them on the process.

 

Simple as that....

 

Edit: Hope I haven't jinxed it (will update in 3-5 days).

Edited March 7, 2019 by Koldov

[kcalderw]

From what I'm told I should be "verified" by Monday and able to add the licenses.