[ms office - 2016] Office 365 Click to Run: Device based activation

[KevinB]

Has anyone got C2R working with device based activation in the UK?

 

According to everything I've read I need to have the STANDARDWOFFPACK_IW_STUDENT SKU available in order for this to work, and this SKU corresponds to "Office 365 A1 Plus for students". I've been trying to have my reseller add this SKU to our account but for some reason this is proving difficult. Do any of you other 365 users have C2R working with DBA, and if so how did you get the SKU added to your tenant?

 

Edit to add: We already have 365 ProPlus licensing which is why I think we're entitled to A1 Plus rather than the free A1.

 

Cheers,

Kevin.

Edited March 14, 2018 by KevinB

[psydii]

Is there a reason you don't just used shared computer activation?

 

If you've got things set up right, the latest monthly releases of Office365 C2R have allowed automatic (transparent to the user) activation on Windows 10.

[free780]

I've got computer activation working. However officially Microsoft only support it in the US. When I asked Office 365 support they said Windows 10 thick client should be on device activation (creates an azure AD account per computer) and use Shared activation (use group policy) on RDS. Since then MS are going to drop support for Office 365 Pro plus on Server 2016 in 2020.

The true with shared activation is you don't know what the limit is for activations.

[DJ-1701]

Anyone got a guide of how to get this activating with no user input? As when using C2R it requires a user to sign in (and use on of their user 365 PC licenses) or enter a key of some sort on first use.

[KevinB]

This was the guide I was going to follow but am stuck until the SKU I mentioned above is made available.

[Cache]

Try signing up for this, I think that got the SKU added to our tenant. https://products.office.com/en-gb/student/office-in-education

[KevinB]

Unfortunately I've already tried that method and it didn't work for us. Thanks though

[psydii]

I've asked this before, but does shared device activation not work for you?

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/overview-of-shared-computer-activation-for-office-365-proplus

 

It cites RDS as an example scenario, but not the exclusive scenario.

 

It works really well for us.

 

Also as a UK site I have received support on this from MS I had to be firm about the expectations but they did fix our issues. That said we are always bang up to date, with quite a few Insiders and fast track users with all the telemetry turned on, so it is kind of in their interest to keep this 'canary in the coal mine' happy.

[Maus]

Sorry to bring up and old thread, but for providence for anyone else struggling with this, I wanted to share how I managed to get this to work (UK)

 

The blogs cover most of thesteps, but the key step is that you need to get Student A1 Plus licenses, which as noted you need to go through the SKU sign-up as an unlicensed student- BUT for this to work, your domain has to have been cleared by Microsoft as an Education institution.

 

If the sign-up doesn't work, contact [email protected] and they can do this for you (additional note: they've been extremely efficient and helpful to me, definitely some of the good guys out there)

 

Finally, I was getting "Exception: License unavailable – GetUser – early exit"- to remedy this, there's an FAQ that covers some of the common issues that says you need to run a powershell command against Azure:

 

Connect-MsolService

 

$objectId = Get-MsolServicePrincipal | ?{ $_.AppPrincipalId -eq "300e65c0-b3f4-4b46-b3d5-51d99dda4edf" } | select -ExpandProperty ObjectId

 

Add-MsolRoleMember -RoleName "Company Administrator" -RoleMemberType ServicePrincipal -RoleMemberObjectId $objectId

 

This should be enough to get anyone struggling through any issues.

[KevinB]

Thanks for the tip @Maus, unfortunately that doesn't work for me, I only get A1 licenses, not A1 Plus. I've emailed that m265edu address to ask for help as I hadn't seen that one before and my previous interactio with the Office 365 team on the phone was, erm, sub-optimal Fingers crosses these other guys will be able to help!

[adwalpole]

Did you get this resolved Kevin ? we are in the same boat and had no help from Microsoft !

[adwalpole]

Do you have the name of the contact at m365edu that added the sku for you ? we don't seem to be able to get this done !

[sparkeh]

Took me a long time to get the A1 Plus added. Basically you need I have OVS-ES agreement for Office an be approved as an educational establishment, then you enable self sign up and log in as an unlicensed student and unlicensed staff user and the licences will appear.

 

It’s the approval that seems to be a real issue here. Although we were told that we were approved the person who solved our issue submitted a request to have us approved for A1 Plus. Tested a few days later and it finally worked.

[KevinB]

Did you get this resolved Kevin ? we are in the same boat and had no help from Microsoft !

 

I did eventually get it sorted but it necessitated the involvement of Microsoft's UK Academic licensing lead. I had to create an online case to get things started, then just kept plugging away at them. Eventually the call was escalated high enough to get the SKU added, but even then there was no joy. It turns out that as well as adding the SKU to your account, you as the customer need to connect to your O365 account via powershell and issue the following command:

 

Set-MsolCompanySettings -AllowEmailVerifiedUsers $true

 

And hey presto, once that was done, A1 Plus appeared as an option once we signed up a dummy user to it.

 

The whole process is far from intuitive, and Microsofts own documentation on what steps to follow are awful.

 

Hope that's of some use.

Cheers,

Kevin.

Edited August 15, 2018 by KevinB

[mullet_man]

Do A1 Plus licences replace having to get ProPlus licenses?

 

We have the normal A1 licenses but then get our reseller to add ProPlus for faculty and student as well. This allows them to download office at home.

[sparkeh]

Do A1 Plus licences replace having to get ProPlus licenses?

Yes

We have the normal A1 licenses but then get our reseller to add ProPlus for faculty and student as well. This allows them to download office at home.

A1 plus allows this but also allows device based activation

[mullet_man]

Thanks.

[mullet_man]

I've just emailed and got a response back pretty quick, they want our agreement and might need some extra verification as not every school is automatically eligible.

 

I'll keep you posted on my progress

[mullet_man]

They've added our domain onto the list - that was quick and painless.

[johnpd]

Is there a reason you don't just used shared computer activation?

 

If you've got things set up right, the latest monthly releases of Office365 C2R have allowed automatic (transparent to the user) activation on Windows 10.

 

Really - how do I set this as users still have to sign in at each new pc.

[Boredguy]

https://sysadminedu.wordpress.com/2017/01/07/step-by-step-guide-to-deploying-office-365-pro-plus-with-device-based-activation-with-sccm/ has the details for Device based activation as long as you have A1 Plus for Students in your O365 licence allocation

[mullet_man]

https://sysadminedu.wordpress.com/2017/01/07/step-by-step-guide-to-deploying-office-365-pro-plus-with-device-based-activation-with-sccm/ has the details for Device based activation as long as you have A1 Plus for Students in your O365 licence allocation

 

Is shared computer activation the same as device based activation then?

 

As I've installed O365 on 3 machines as a test and it hasn't complained about activating, and it isn't showing up as a install on the users O365 installs.

 

If I run a report in O365 on activation it does show up as TRUE under Activated On Shared Computer

 

I don't have any extra licenses applied in O365 just A1 and ProPlus, but Microsoft said they were adding our tenancy/domain to the Education Plus licenses. Am not sure if am good to deploy it out to more devices that all!?!

[Boredguy]

Shared Activation uses the logged on users credentials to activate the office session. So if you have a user that does not have any Office 365 licence, you might find that it says it is not activated.

 

Device Activation creates a computer account in 365 with the A1 Plus for Students licence and does not worry about what licence the current user might have.

 

Both methods are perfectly valid.

[mullet_man]

Shared Activation uses the logged on users credentials to activate the office session. So if you have a user that does not have any Office 365 licence, you might find that it says it is not activated.

 

Device Activation creates a computer account in 365 with the A1 Plus for Students licence and does not worry about what licence the current user might have.

 

Both methods are perfectly valid.

 

Am not sure what is best - I might push out O365 for staff on their laptops and keep with 2019 for students.

 

There's a few things on here which we could possibly run into - how many is too many activations?

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/overview-of-shared-computer-activation-for-office-365-proplus

 

And this is typical MS

 

"If you don't use single sign-on, you should consider using roaming profiles and include the %localappdata%\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Licensing folder as part of the roaming profile."

 

I thought roaming profiles were not supported anymore?

 

Am feeling O365 might cause me lots more issues.

[Blue_Cookeh]

I've just emailed and got a response back pretty quick, they want our agreement and might need some extra verification as not every school is automatically eligible.

 

I'll keep you posted on my progress

 

@mullet_man , who did you e-mail please?

 

I went through Office365 support and they don't have a clue what I'm on about.

Edited October 4, 2018 by witch