Moving from 365 A1 Plsu to A3 - can't assign licenses

[Sheridan]

We're all on 365 A1 Plus for staff and students here, which is being removed/switched to A1 next year. As we also use the 365 desktop apps we're force to use A3 and have upgraded our agreement to include this so they will sign in

 

Problem is, when I try to assign the A3 licenses to the Students group - its fails with the utterly useless error message:

 

One or more errors occurred. Please review the results below.

 

 

There was an error assigning licenses to Please try again.

 

So I'm stuck at this point, is this because they are currently on A1 Plus, as I thought you could have dual A1 Plus/A3 until the A1 Plus expires?

 

 

 

[bald_pig]

Probably a conflicting license, I think it's sharepoint that normally only allows one license plan applied at a time?

 

*Under "Apps"*

Edited December 10, 2024 by bald_pig

[psydii]

You need to unassign the A1 licence before the A3 can be applied.

[PotNoodleTech]

Theres some stuff going on with officce365 today a couple of things not working here and there might be worth waiting till that's fixed

[Sheridan]

Not sure how that would work if I removed A1 Plus before adding A3 Faculty? - would that not break their accounts in the meantime as they would have no licence?

[Boredguy]

It depends if your licences are directly assigned or via group.

If via Group, select to remove the A1, and then assign the A3 and it was fine for us.

 

If you have directly assigned licences, you can go into each user and revoke the A1 and tell it to reprocess to resolve the licence clash and it will fix it for the user.

I did ours our of school hours and it was fine (other than we had Teams Phone licences assigned for some users so had to remove them first then put it back and their phone numbers!)

[Sheridan]

Hmm that sounds a bit scary, as we use Groups we'd have to go to the A1 Plus, remove the group, then go to A3 and add the group?

 

I guess this shouldn't take too long but there is a period in the middle that a bit vague

Edited December 10, 2024 by Sheridan

[Boredguy]

Assign your A3, revoke your A1 Plus, and generally sorts itself out

[bald_pig]

I have both A1 and A3 applied, it's just the sharepoint plans that conflict:

[Sheridan]

Thats when I get the error - it won't assign until the A1 Plus is removed

[Sheridan]

I have both A1 and A3 applied, it's just the sharepoint plans that conflict:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]72781[/ATTACH]

Ah that's done it, when I add the A3 to the existing A1 Plus users but with Sharepoint Plan 2 removed it works, so I might only have to switch off Sharepoint Plan 1 from A1 Plus and switch on Plan 2 for A3 at some point!

[Sheridan]

One question I can't find an answer to is, if I switch a user to A1 for Faculty/Students (i.e what A1 Plus will default to next year) will that account be able to SSO into our locally installed Office (365 Current Channel) as we have our desktops set to SSO sign into OneDrive and Office etc

 

Surely we don't need an A3 license for that? Or is this the way MS are going, although I'm not too bothered about a lot of accounts not being able to download the apps I would like them to be able to sign into our already deployed installations of 365 (down with SCCM and our EES license!)

[bald_pig]

One question I can't find an answer to is, if I switch a user to A1 for Faculty/Students (i.e what A1 Plus will default to next year) will that account be able to SSO into our locally installed Office (365 Current Channel) as we have our desktops set to SSO sign into OneDrive and Office etc

 

Surely we don't need an A3 license for that? Or is this the way MS are going, although I'm not too bothered about a lot of accounts not being able to download the apps I would like them to be able to sign into our already deployed installations of 365 (down with SCCM and our EES license!)

 

Should be fine, you may find that users have to sign out of office and back in again for the apps to pick up the change in license.

[Sheridan]

Damn it - it doesn't like a user connect to 365 when opening the local copy of Word - they just get the error

[h=3]"The products we found in your account cannot be used to activate Office in shared computer scenarios"[/h]

God I hate MS and their licensing, it just keeps pushing me further and further towards GSuite

[Boredguy]

If you've got Office 365 clients installed it should be fine as long as it had shared device licencing selected.

[Sheridan]

If you've got Office 365 clients installed it should be fine as long as it had shared device licencing selected.

 

Thats exactly what I have - but using a test account that only has 365 A1 for faculty and it won't activate as it doesn't have the 365 Apps for Enterprise - it only works if you have A3 etc

[Boredguy]

What licence have you applied to your users?

Our students have Microsoft 365 A3 for students use benefit (Staff have Microsoft 365 A3 for faculty)

[Sheridan]

That's exactly what we have, but as we pay for A3 on the FTE count we will be quite a bit short on the Faculty side of accounts (due to part time, supply etc accounts)

 

So for example we have a good few temp Supply accounts, and they aren't included in the count, but need to be able to use 365 Apps on the desktop, but if we assign then just a normal A1 sub they can't

 

I think you can opt for device based activation, but I guess MS will block these accounts from signing in via SSO as well

Edited December 11, 2024 by Sheridan

[mcolbourn]

When we moved from A1 Plus to A3 we have to get enough licences to cover anyone that needed to use the desktop apps even if they were part time. We also purchased a few extra A3 licenses to cover temp accounts etc that may come along so we do have a few A3 licenses unassigned.

[robintech]

That's exactly what we have, but as we pay for A3 on the FTE count we will be quite a bit short on the Faculty side of accounts (due to part time, supply etc accounts)

 

So for example we have a good few temp Supply accounts, and they aren't included in the count, but need to be able to use 365 Apps on the desktop, but if we assign then just a normal A1 sub they can't

 

I think you can opt for device based activation, but I guess MS will block these accounts from signing in via SSO as well

 

Since August this year I think A1 plus which is the only A1 that gave Desktop apps is gone, can use Office 365 A1 for students (free) with Microsoft 365 Apps for Students, for desktop access(paid)

 

Edit: looks like January 2025 now

"Office 365 A1 Plus for education will retire in January 2025" https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/education/products/office-365-a1-plus

Edited December 12, 2024 by ittech2342323

[Arclin]

We're primed to buy the A3 for Faculty but our A1 plusses are still working for now...

 

Then all the kids will get A3 student use licences.

[Sheridan]

Its goes from bad to worse - I've pruned our Staff list down for those who will need A3, synched the group and added the license to that group so they should have A1 Plus and also A3 - but it failed for every single user with the status of 'Conflicting service plans.

 

Of course, MS don;t tell you what the conflict is. I've tried to switch off Sharepoint Plan2 as that's been mentioned as an issue, but it has the same error and switches it back on anyway!

 

How on earth are you supposed to find the conflict, its such as mess of Plan 1, Plan 2 etc!

[psydii]

Last time I checked, without OVS users need A3 to enable edit capabilities inside the desktop apps.

 

AFAIK the Share Computer Activation use case here is to prevent hot-desking users incrementing their activation count (an A3-E5 has a limit number of product activation, and if you hop between a dozen computers a week you might find apps stop working if SCA isn't configured)

[Sheridan]

I'm prepared to use our A3 licenses - it looks like th best option long term, but no matter what I switch on or off I get "Conflicting Service Plans"

 

I don't think MS even know this works. I've got a test account with A1 and A3 - but I can't remove A1 as it says

 

"To assign a license that contains Office for the Web for Education, you must also assign one of the following service plans: SharePoint (Plan 2) for Education, SharePoint (Plan 1) for Education."

 

But that Plan 2 is in the A3 licence! I've been on this for 2 weeks now, have 4 unanswered tickets with MS - its really pushing me to GSuite more and more!

Edited December 13, 2024 by Sheridan

[mcolbourn]

Sheridan

 

How I did the move over the summer was:

 

I had all members of a group assigned an A1 Plus plan, so I just removed this licence first from the group waited a few mins and then added the A3 licence to that group. I did hold my breath, but it worked fine no one lost access to anything.