Microsoft Azure AD simplifies the licensing management of Microsoft cloud services such as O365, Enterprise Mobility + Security, Dynamics CRM etc. by providing group-based licensing. A user could be part of the multiple groups and multiple licenses can be assigned through a single group or through multiple groups. However, a license can be assigned directly to the user if group based assignment is not needed. As Azure AD is a backbone for all identity needs of any Microsoft cloud services. Therefore, this group-based licensing can be managed through Azure AD. While assigning licenses to multiple users via group-based licensing, you may observe multiple permutation and combination of services enablement and license assignment. Let’s take an example to understand this scenario.

Inside Microsoft Technology is a company that deals in technical content writing and has two major teams. One team deals in writing and another teams deals in marketing. Company has O365 for business productivity and marketing team uses all the features that comes under E3 licenses and at the same time writing team also uses all the E3 features except Yammer because all the team members of writing team, don’t interact with others through corporate social networking. Rest of the teams have specific set of features enable to complete their jobs. Therefore, administrator can make two action plans for these groups for.

Plan1: Create a single group for both the teams and disable Yammer for the employees who don’t need it.

Plan2: Create one group for Marketing team and assign E3 licenses and create another group for writing team and assign E3 licenses but enable Yammer for only those users who need it.

Let see how to do it.

Go to the https://aad.portal.azure.com

Go to the Azure Active Directory and select Licenses

Under licenses, select all products.

Under all products, select specific products and click on Assign.

Go to the Licensed Groups under general, select “+ Assign”.

Select the specific group, which you want to license.

Go to the Assignment options, select specific products and then click on Ok.

Finally, click on Assign and you are done.