Office 365 A1 Plus for faculty licences missing!

[Koldov]

Quick update.... and another question....

 

It seems that the approval has possibly stalled due to the following:

 

For the .sch.uk domain, the validation team sent along this:

 

“We weren’t able to assess this domain as we could not find it anywhere.

Could you please provide proof that it belongs to an academic institution? A current certificate of ownership stating the domain belongs and is to be used by the school/academic institution should suffice.”

 

How do I answer this exactly...?

Edited March 13, 2019 by Koldov

[smarties11]

Presumably this domain was registered on your behalf by the LA? Are you able to get a certificate of ownership from them?

 

Usually for these kind of things you can prove ownership by creating a file at the web root or by creating a DNS record on the domain. Perhaps ask if these would be options?

 

Either way Microsoft are being silly because it's impossible for anyone other than an academic institution to register a .sch.uk domain!

[localzuk]

Schools don't get "certificates of ownership" for sch.uk domains, but they are registered with Nominet. However... Nominet no longer list any details of ownership, due to their changes of Whois due to GDPR.

 

They do have a document on their site about school domains - https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/nominet-prod/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/27104952/Schools_Domain_Name_Rules.pdf

 

Do you not use the domain for your school site? Might it be worth setting up some DNS records to point to your actual school site if you don't use it at the moment? That proves its for a school.

[kcalderw]

Update on my end. Our licenses went through yesterday.

[Koldov]

Either way Microsoft are being silly because it's impossible for anyone other than an academic institution to register a .sch.uk domain!

 

Yeah, I am trying to bite my lip as we speak especially as this is their EDU department and not get into any sarcasm (they don't understand it I believe).

 

So, I am still unsure how to 'prove' ownership... We have the domain name with a UK registrar (not Nominet), the TXT record at the registrar was amended to allow O365 to 'verify the domain' - but I think I missed out the full 'online services' settings or updating the DNS settings part though .

 

The nominet Whois search doesn't really provide any useful information and we don't have any website attached to the domain name.

[localzuk]

Yeah, I am trying to bite my lip as we speak especially as this is their EDU department and not get into any sarcasm (they don't understand it I believe).

So, I am still unsure how to 'prove' ownership... We have the domain name with a UK registrar (not Nominet), the TXT record at the registrar was amended to allow O365 to 'verify the domain' - but I think I missed out the full 'online services' settings or updating the DNS settings part though .

The nominet Whois search doesn't really provide any useful information and we don't have any website attached to the domain name.

Can you not simply stick a CNAME record in there and point it at your real website address?

[mullet_man]

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.

 

When I emailed it was Ben Dylla who emailed me back and he said he'd added our domain onto there list for A1 Plus Licenses. He just asked for our volume licensing agreement number to check we had bought Office licenses I guess.

 

My question is, where do I find out I've actually got A1 Plus Licenses? I can't see them listed anywhere?

 

If I deploy out Office 365 instead of Professional it all works fine for the small group of users, no one gets asked to sign up or activate it just works.

 

I just want to make sure before I deploy out to all staff that I am actually covered!

[smarties11]

When I emailed it was Ben Dylla who emailed me back and he said he'd added our domain onto there list for A1 Plus Licenses. He just asked for our volume licensing agreement number to check we had bought Office licenses I guess.

 

My question is, where do I find out I've actually got A1 Plus Licenses? I can't see them listed anywhere?

 

If I deploy out Office 365 instead of Professional it all works fine for the small group of users, no one gets asked to sign up or activate it just works.

 

I just want to make sure before I deploy out to all staff that I am actually covered!

 

Click on the billing button on the left hand menu, and then licenses. If you have them, they will show here as "Office 365 A1 Plus for faculty" and "Office 365 A1 Plus for students". You then need to assign these to your users instead of the standard A1 ones or the Office 365 ProPlus ones.

 

If your Office 365 deployment is working then most likely you have SSO turned on for your tenant and your users are being signed in automatically. If you specified 'shared computer activation' in your XML, they will be being activated against this, otherwise they will be being activated against the Office 365 ProPlus license (designed for home use) and each computer they use in school will be counting towards their 5 home licenses and you will soon run into issues.

 

You really need to use either Shared Computer Activation or Device Based Activation. We opted for the latter but it does require some additional steps. See here for information https://boards.microsoft.com/public/prism/80710/category/34626?token=f55452094b. It's worth pointing out that Device Based Activation isn't officially supported outside of the US, but there are plenty of schools in the UK who are using it without issue.

 

Hope this helps!

[mullet_man]

Hi smarties11

 

Thanks for the reply, here is my license list

 

I can see A1 Plus for Students but not faculty (random) I might email Ben back to see if we can add Facutly too then.

 

We do have SSO and users are being signed in automatically, I thought that might be the case that they are using one of the 5 ProPlus licenses but if I check my number it hasn't taken off one of the installs and doesn't list my work PC.

 

I set the shared computer activation in my XML, I tried device based a while back and couldn't get it working - before I contact MS to get the licenses added.

 

Am just worried if I deploy out to staff at some point Office will stop working

Edited April 26, 2019 by mullet_man

[mullet_man]

Although doing a bit of Googling, if I use powershell and connect to our O365 and run

 

Get-MsolAccountSku

 

I can see are have these licenses

 

STANDARDWOFFPACK_FACULTY

STANDARDWOFFPACK_STUDENT

STANDARDWOFFPACK_IW_STUDENT

 

Which seem to relate to Office 365 Education which I think are what A1 Plus has been renamed too?

 

Am so confused?!?!

[mullet_man]

I've emailed Ben, I need confirmation everything is in place and working before I deploy out O365.

[smarties11]

It looks like you have been validated for A1 Plus, so to get the A1 Plus faculty licenses to show, you should just need to take an unlicensed user through the self-service sign up page at https://products.office.com/en-us/student/office-in-education - i.e. make sure the user you choose currently has no licenses assigned in O365 admin. This will then license that user for A1 Plus and make the licenses available for you to assign to other users.

 

If you set shared activation in the XML, then this is how your O365 clients are activating. This model basically activates the O365 device for each user individually when they log in and is designed for situations where you might have 1 PC shared by a small handful of users e.g. in a hospital or call centre. I read somewhere in the MS documentation that 'excessive activation attempts' would result in activation being blocked. I don't know how many activations it would take, but in a school where on student computers there is a high turnover of logins/logouts you could easily hit several hundred activations per day - so we decided to go down the Device Based Activation route instead. This creates a 'user' for each client in O365 admin and your client checks in I think every 30 days. It's dead simple once you've got it up and running but does require the computer to have an Internet connection at the point you run the DBA script to activate the computer. Bear this in mind if you want to automate this process using SCCM - as the task sequence command run under the local system account, you'll need authentication exceptions in place for the Microsoft domain on your proxy.

[mullet_man]

It looks like you have been validated for A1 Plus, so to get the A1 Plus faculty licenses to show, you should just need to take an unlicensed user through the self-service sign up page at https://products.office.com/en-us/student/office-in-education - i.e. make sure the user you choose currently has no licenses assigned in O365 admin. This will then license that user for A1 Plus and make the licenses available for you to assign to other users.

 

If you set shared activation in the XML, then this is how your O365 clients are activating. This model basically activates the O365 device for each user individually when they log in and is designed for situations where you might have 1 PC shared by a small handful of users e.g. in a hospital or call centre. I read somewhere in the MS documentation that 'excessive activation attempts' would result in activation being blocked. I don't know how many activations it would take, but in a school where on student computers there is a high turnover of logins/logouts you could easily hit several hundred activations per day - so we decided to go down the Device Based Activation route instead. This creates a 'user' for each client in O365 admin and your client checks in I think every 30 days. It's dead simple once you've got it up and running but does require the computer to have an Internet connection at the point you run the DBA script to activate the computer. Bear this in mind if you want to automate this process using SCCM - as the task sequence command run under the local system account, you'll need authentication exceptions in place for the Microsoft domain on your proxy.

 

 

Thanks I'll take a look at that link.

 

I've emailed MS so hopefully will get some more information, I opted for shared device but I know most of our staff laptops are one user but sometimes it happens where others log on them. Am wary to deploy this out to student devices because of that reason of running into activation limits. Was going to stick with Office 2019 for pupil devices but O365 for staff.

 

I'll see what MS say when they get back and go from there.

[Koldov]

It looks like you have been validated for A1 Plus, so to get the A1 Plus faculty licenses to show, you should just need to take an unlicensed user through the self-service sign up page at https://products.office.com/en-us/student/office-in-education - i.e. make sure the user you choose currently has no licenses assigned in O365 admin. This will then license that user for A1 Plus and make the licenses available for you to assign to other users.

 

Can't help with the per user or device activation thing, but the above is what you need to get the licenses to show in your portal (not sure why you have Student showing already though if you haven't done this with a Student account)...

[smarties11]

Thanks I'll take a look at that link.

 

I've emailed MS so hopefully will get some more information, I opted for shared device but I know most of our staff laptops are one user but sometimes it happens where others log on them. Am wary to deploy this out to student devices because of that reason of running into activation limits. Was going to stick with Office 2019 for pupil devices but O365 for staff.

 

I'll see what MS say when they get back and go from there.

 

We're running O365 for all students and staff now on our Win10 machines (approx. 370 computers) using Device Based Activation and have had no issues at all once the device has been provisioned. The only niggle we have run into (on 3 machines in total) is where the DBA script fails (presumably because of a transient Internet connection issue). What happens then is that the O365 client activates against the user's account. So all we do now is check that the machine has licensed correctly before issuing it by looking at the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\Configuration\O365ProPlusRetail.EmailAddress - if it has licensed correctly the key value should always start with '_D' which represents the O365 device based user account '[email protected]'. Other than that it has worked superbly for us.

[Boredguy]

Likewise all our stations are running DBA with zero issues as it gives a student licence to the device. We do use the onmicrosoft tenancy for our 365 activation though

[mullet_man]

It looks like you have been validated for A1 Plus, so to get the A1 Plus faculty licenses to show, you should just need to take an unlicensed user through the self-service sign up page at https://products.office.com/en-us/student/office-in-education - i.e. make sure the user you choose currently has no licenses assigned in O365 admin. This will then license that user for A1 Plus and make the licenses available for you to assign to other users.

 

If you set shared activation in the XML, then this is how your O365 clients are activating. This model basically activates the O365 device for each user individually when they log in and is designed for situations where you might have 1 PC shared by a small handful of users e.g. in a hospital or call centre. I read somewhere in the MS documentation that 'excessive activation attempts' would result in activation being blocked. I don't know how many activations it would take, but in a school where on student computers there is a high turnover of logins/logouts you could easily hit several hundred activations per day - so we decided to go down the Device Based Activation route instead. This creates a 'user' for each client in O365 admin and your client checks in I think every 30 days. It's dead simple once you've got it up and running but does require the computer to have an Internet connection at the point you run the DBA script to activate the computer. Bear this in mind if you want to automate this process using SCCM - as the task sequence command run under the local system account, you'll need authentication exceptions in place for the Microsoft domain on your proxy.

 

When I got to sign up via the self-service link it says I already have a Office 365 Education license.

 

I haven't had a reply back to my email to the O365 team, anyone know if it normally takes a few days? Been a week now.

[Koldov]

Are you signing-in there as a completely new user?

 

I think it will give you that if you are the admin or have previously signed in there.

 

New browser window with no previous log-ins (or browser history/cookies etc cleared).

 

Edited May 3, 2019 by Koldov

[mullet_man]

Are you signing-in there as a completely new user?

 

I think it will give you that if you are the admin or have previously signed in there.

 

New browser window with no previous log-ins (or browser history/cookies etc cleared).

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]53264[/ATTACH]

 

Yep I didn't do that doh! I'll have another go with a unlicenced user!

[mullet_man]

Ah OK I now seem to have Office 365 A1 Plus for Faculty licenses showing.

 

Which I guess is a step in the right direction?!

[Koldov]

YAY!

 

 

Take the win!

 

Go home!

 

Have a good weekend...

[mullet_man]

Hahahaha I should :-)

 

3 day weekend too!

 

Thanks!

[victory2015]

I am having this trouble now, we need them these licences too but im not having any luck getting them added, offcie 365 support keep telling me i need pruchase them froma reseller and i managed get hold of the contact Ben mentioned in this thread and his repsonse was not what others have described..

 

"Hello,

 

At this time I am unable to submit domains for the A1 Plus licenses. I would recommend reaching out to Support through your Admin Center to see if they can mark your tenant as eligible for the A1 Plus licenses.

 

Thank you,

 

Ben Dylla"

 

has anyone got another contact or had any luck im desperate as i need get our windows 10 image ready for the summer and device activation is holding me back.

 

THANKS!!

[mullet_man]

I am having this trouble now, we need them these licences too but im not having any luck getting them added, offcie 365 support keep telling me i need pruchase them froma reseller and i managed get hold of the contact Ben mentioned in this thread and his repsonse was not what others have described..

 

"Hello,

 

At this time I am unable to submit domains for the A1 Plus licenses. I would recommend reaching out to Support through your Admin Center to see if they can mark your tenant as eligible for the A1 Plus licenses.

 

Thank you,

 

Ben Dylla"

 

has anyone got another contact or had any luck im desperate as i need get our windows 10 image ready for the summer and device activation is holding me back.

 

THANKS!!

I emailed Ben a while back and didn't get a reply but it looks like you got a reply and he doesn't do that job anymore or something?!

 

Have you logged a call within your admin section of Office 365 portal as Ben suggests?

 

We buy the office Pro plus licences which cost nothing, I believe it's based on you having these licenses on your tenant before they will add your domain to the A1 pro licenses.

 

It's still very confusing the licensing of Microsoft products .

 

If you log a call and get a reply, let us know here if it helps any future people etc.

[CHiLL]

I've had a ticket open with O365 suport via the admin centre since 03/07/2019. The only response (other than the odd automated "we're investigated and will contact you with more information"), I've had a response asking for the following:

To continue troubleshooting this service request you need to have one of the following documents:

-Enrollment for Education Solutions, Open Value Subscription Education Solutions, or a school contract agreement

 

The only document we've received is our "Open Value Welcome Letter" when we started our latest OVS-ES agreement. I've sent that to them and not heard anything back yet.