[ms office - o365] office 365 or office 2016

[Mr.Ben]

FTE is the older method. Microsoft is moving to EQU. Basically anyone who uses a PC needs to be licenced. Ideally Microsoft A3. Then you get DBL Office 365 Proplus and an exclusion for conditional access for MFA, intune, AzureAD Security etc. Yes there is a cost but eventually MS will want everyone to move to M365.

And that cost van be balanced against other costs - moving data to SharePoint/OneDrive and removing on prem servers.

 

Bizarrely, pricing for EES is better Vs OVS at around the 650 users mark (we bought 1000 and saved Vs the OVS quotes).

[localzuk]

So if we are forced to use EES to get Office365 DBS, what are the criteria? From what I can see there is some conflicting information, some say FTE 1000+ and others say 1000+ EQU (Education Qualified Users) or students. So if we get 1000 students the cheapest license for something then we qualify for EES? Do free Office365 licenses for personal use count to qualify? Just my thoughts following the information from Microsoft forcing us to look at EES.

EQU is still employees, not students. So, the minimum buy in is 1000 EQUs. "Education Qualified User” means an employee or contractor (except Students) who access or uses an Education Platform Product for the benefit of the Institution."

[kennysarmy]

Latest reply from Microsoft via our channel supplier!

 

As we discussed before, Device based Subscription for Office 365 ProPlus is available for EES customer only at this moment. This requires devices to be licensed with the proper SKU available for EES customers. I have also shared with you the Microsoft Product Terms February 2020 where there is information for Lab devices and Extended Use Rights for Office 365 ProPlus.

 

 

 

For the OVS, OVS-ES customers the recommended method is to implement Shared Computer Activation for Office 365 ProPlus on their shared devices. This was also mentioned several times in our communications.

[localzuk]

The thing is, we seem to just be repeatedly being told the same thing, and we don't seem to be getting anywhere passing back to them "WHY?!". Why have they made this arbitrary decision to exclude OVS-ES from a license type that doesn't cost them anything? And it doesn't seem like anyone at Microsoft is going to listen or answer that question.

[robyholmes]

I've also been asking Microsoft partners about this and putting examples to them. One example is visitor accounts and they've said we should licence them as we do students or staff. To me that's not applying licencing correctly but it seems to be the only solution. I'll likely to deploy Office 365 over summer so lets see what appears between then and now.

[chazzy2501]

yay for me, I decided to go Office 2019 (over a year ago) as it seemed that was the direction M$ wanted us plebs to go... and I was right.

[kennysarmy]

The thing is, we seem to just be repeatedly being told the same thing, and we don't seem to be getting anywhere passing back to them "WHY?!". Why have they made this arbitrary decision to exclude OVS-ES from a license type that doesn't cost them anything? And it doesn't seem like anyone at Microsoft is going to listen or answer that question.

 

[email protected]

 

That's the guy from MS I've been emailing.

 

I've not had any contact from him since the 18th Feb so I thought I'd post his address here so anyone else waiting for answers can also bombard him with questions to see if you get any further!

[mitchell1981]

[email protected]

 

That's the guy from MS I've been emailing.

 

I've not had any contact from him since the 18th Feb so I thought I'd post his address here so anyone else waiting for answers can also bombard him with questions to see if you get any further!

 

 

I've sent an email today. I'll let you know if I get anything back. I made it clear how crazy it is that Microsoft are wanting schools to use Office 365 but don't offer a way to actually licence it!

[CHiLL]

I have also emailed Paul Morrison. I went down the route of we want to enhance the student experience with the latest version, like larger schools can and we cannot.

 

Edit: I've received a very basic reply from Paul:

Thanks for reaching out and sorry you are experiencing difficulties.

 

Could I invite you to one of our level 200 training sessions that is being run by one of our training partner Tablet Academy for Network Administrators and IT Pros in schools. Microsoft provides all the content and presenters for 2 half day sessions (1 morning and 1 afternoon). The next session 26th March 2020 Microsoft Campus Reading.

 

Here is a description:

 

Free, half-day events for School IT staff and Managed Service Providers to learn how Microsoft 365 can help improve outcomes, reduce costs and simplify how you manage your devices.

Content focused on Microsoft 365 licensing, Intune, Autopilot and Teams from an IT managers perspective.

https://tablet-academy.com/microsoft-365-technical-roadshow/

 

This will be a great opportunity for you to provide your feedback directly and investigate alternative ways to provision your devices in your school. Let me know what you think.

 

Can I also ask who is the Microsoft reseller that provides services to your school?

 

Please note I have flagged this internally following various messages from the EduGeek community.

 

Kind regards

Paul

Clearly our messages are getting through, as he references Edugeek directly. However what they do next, we'll have to hope and see.

Edited March 10, 2020 by CHiLL

[kennysarmy]

I've not had any contact with him since the 18th Feb

[CHiLL]

I've not had any contact with him since the 18th Feb

 

I've replied back to him with our reseller and the fact that there's nothing they can do about it because we aren't eligible for EES in any way. As for the training, I'm unlikely to be able to get the time off for that, even though Reading isn't that far from me here in irmingham. I guess unless it falls within a school holiday/my annual leave, I can't go (thanks management).

[mitchell1981]

Just had the same response as CHiLL. I will try to attend if I can. Although I'm not really wanting to "investigate alternative ways to provision your devices" as I'm pretty sure that will just be Shared User Activation which I'm not impressed with.

[mitchell1981]

Not unexpectedly these events have been cancelled, so no more progress made unfortunately and I'm not going to push it at the moment!

[kennysarmy]

 

Office 2019 it is then - thanks Microsoft for nothing!

[5tu]

My MS licensing reseller has suggested we use "shared computer activation for Office 365 ProPlus".

 

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

 

Anyone else looked at this and know whether it works for OVS customers?

[MicrodigitUK]

My MS licensing reseller has suggested we use "shared computer activation for Office 365 ProPlus".

 

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

 

Anyone else looked at this and know whether it works for OVS customers?

 

Yes it works as we use it on our RDS session host servers. However every user that logs on must have there own O365 licence allocated. However if you have accounts like visitor or exam accounts that don’t have there own O365 licence then it doesn’t work.

[CHiLL]

My MS licensing reseller has suggested we use "shared computer activation for Office 365 ProPlus".

 

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

 

Anyone else looked at this and know whether it works for OVS customers?

Shared Activation doesn't work with O365 if multiple users use the same workstation. It'll appear to work at the beginning, however once you get to the fourth, fifth, sixth user...you'll start running into activation errors. So it's no use in somewhere like a shared IT room or library.

[ThomL]

Shared Activation doesn't work with O365 if multiple users use the same workstation. It'll appear to work at the beginning, however once you get to the fourth, fifth, sixth user...you'll start running into activation errors. So it's no use in somewhere like a shared IT room or library.

I've used this method in this situation and we had maybe 1 license failure a week per room, closing and reopen the office application fixed most/all of those that had an error.

But this was 4 years or so a go maybe it's not so good any more...

[CHiLL]

I've used this method in this situation and we had maybe 1 license failure a week per room, closing and reopen the office application fixed most/all of those that had an error.

But this was 4 years or so a go maybe it's not so good any more...

We've tried it a couple of times over the past couple of years to see if they'd fixed it, but no. At it's worst, about 85% of the computers in an IT suite wouldn't work because they weren't and couldn't be activated. We switched to Office 2019 Professional Plus and have had no issues. The only downside is that 2019 is based on Office 365, so locked to the version of Office 365 that it forked from, so something like 1806. It only receives security updates, not feature updates.

[Norphy]

The only downside is that 2019 is based on Office 365, so locked to the version of Office 365 that it forked from, so something like 1806. It only receives security updates, not feature updates.

 

I don’t know that that’s a downside to be honest, more just a thing. At least with the LTSC version of Office, it’s going to remain consistent for the time that it’s in support whereas with the CB, it’s going to change at the whim of Microsoft. There are advantages to either.

[mavhc]

Because everything is integrated into online systems if they're not constantly updated they're not going to keep working over even the reduce lifetime of 2019 (5.5 years now)

 

A new version of google docs is installed every time you load it. New paradigm

[bicky]

We have been using DBA and now it no longer works. We are on OVS volume licensing.

Read this https://contosoedu.com/deploying-office-365-proplus-device-based-subscription-for-edu/ , however it needs "Microsoft 365 Apps for Education (device)" license and device must be Azure AD joined or Hybrid Azure AD joined.

 

How you guys are doing it ?

[Boredguy]

We have been using DBA and now it no longer works. We are on OVS volume licensing.

Read this https://contosoedu.com/deploying-office-365-proplus-device-based-subscription-for-edu/ , however it needs "Microsoft 365 Apps for Education (device)" license and device must be Azure AD joined or Hybrid Azure AD joined.

 

How you guys are doing it ?

 

There is an existing thread that was started the other day with updated details http://www.edugeek.net/forums/office-software/215576-office-365-device-based-activation-confirmed-no-longer-activating-2.html