[ms office - o365] Office 365 - Device Based Activation/A1 Plus Licensing Woes

[CHiLL]

So I've been banging my head against a brick wall for months now, trying to resolve an issue with Shared Activation when using Office 365. The issue is that unless you're using Device Based Activation, Office 365 will run into licensing issues and become unusable as soon as more than a few people log onto a computer and use an Office application. This is regardless of whether you've specified Shared Computer Activation during the setup or not and you have Office 365 A1 for faculty/students, or Office 365 ProPlus for faculty/students assigned to the account. As soon as say 5 different users with the correct licensing and configuation log on, they will encounter licensing issues and become unusable.

 

So the solution is that you need to use Device Based Activation to get this sorted. However in order to use DBA, you need to be able to assigned A1 Plus licenses, which aren't provided under the usual licensing agreements - you have to contact Microsoft to get it. Here's the kicker - it's only officially supported in the US at the moment. Other's on here have said that they've managed to contact Microsoft and get the A1 plus license assigned and can use DBA without issues. So I contacted Microsoft and...I think I'd prefer eating glass.

 

So Microsoft started the process and had issues getting the A1 Plus license to appear. After a while, they pointed me to this link and told me to use the Education link and sign in using an on-site AD account that's been synchronised to Azure but hasn't had any licenses assigned to it. So I did that and no luck - A1 Plus still isn't appearing in my available licenses. they asked me to try logging in via that link several times as it may take a few goes - no luck. They asked to me to try another account - nope. Another account - nope.

 

Now they're asking for proof of ownership of our domain in the way of an invoice - I'm sorry, what?! We use a school.bham.sch.uk domain and those domains were provided for free by the UK government to schools. We have full control of our DNS and can create A records as we please, but that isn't sufficient enough. I've contacted Link2ICT (our LEA's IT services) and they said that they can't provide proof and linked me to this document, which clearly states how we got our domain.

 

I just want to deploy Office 365 across the site and for it to work without issues. How hard can it be?

 

Sorry for the rant.

Edited September 24, 2019 by CHiLL

[free780]

Well DBA stopped working over the summer. DBL is the new way of doing it. You need to be licenced with A3 and have hybrid join setup. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/device-based-licensing

[CHiLL]

Well DBA stopped working over the summer. DBL is the new way of doing it. You need to be licenced with A3 and have hybrid join setup. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/device-based-licensing

Does the ProPlus license cover that? That article you linked doesn't mention the A3 license. We have both "Office 365 A1 for Students/Faculty" and "Office 365 ProPlus for Students/Faculty" assigned to our users.

[free780]

Sorry I may have got that wrong. Probably best to ask your reseller.