Managing Microsoft 365 Licenses through FlexNet Manager Suite

FlexNet Manager Suite 2022 R1 (On-Premises)

Here is a high-level procedure for managing Microsoft 365 licenses using FlexNet Manager Suite.

To manage Microsoft 365 licenses:

1. To avoid duplicate user records, ensure that the user email addresses recorded in Microsoft 365 are saved in the user records visible in Enterprise > All Users.
   These may be called "compliance users" after the compliance database table where they are saved. The Microsoft 365 email addresses may be saved in either the Email field or the Alternate email field (both on the Details tab of the user properties). Common practice is to preserve the corporate email address in the first of these, and save the one from Microsoft 365 in the Alternate email field.

   Tip: If you have many records to update, consider preparing a spreadsheet that lists your enterprise (Active Directory) email addresses against the Office 365 email addresses for each user, and creating a business adapter to update your records from the spreadsheet by inserting the Microsoft 365 email addresses into the ComplianceUser.AlternateEmail column in your compliance database. Of course, if it is not practical to do this preparation before your first import from Microsoft 365, you can add the Microsoft 365 email addresses to your AD-based user records at any time. Thereafter, the next full import and compliance calculation removes any duplicate user records, based on the now-matching email addresses.
2. Ensure that you have created and scheduled a connector from FlexNet Manager Suite for each tenant of Microsoft 365.
   Typically, each enterprise is represented as a single tenant, although mergers and acquisitions may mean that your enterprise has multiple Microsoft tenants. For details on how to create and schedule a connector to Microsoft 365, see Creating Connections to Microsoft 365.
   Note: The Microsoft 365 connector is the recommended connector to use to create a connection to Microsoft 365. However, if you would like instructions using the legacy Microsoft Office 365 (deprecated) connector, see Creating Connections Using the Microsoft Office 365 (Deprecated) Connector.
3. During the next discovery and inventory collection (following a scheduled connection and the upload of the resulting data), FlexNet Manager Suite creates or updates the following objects:
   • Users: Each imported user from Microsoft 365 is mapped to the appropriate compliance user record (by matching the Email or Alternate email field values). If an imported user cannot be mapped to any compliance user, a new compliance user record is created with a dummy inventory device assigned to this user.
   • Licenses: A Named User multi-product license (MS-Tenant-name Office 365 (Plan XX) is created for each subscription plan linked to each Microsoft tenant:
     • This license is derived from a template provided in the downloadable libraries, and selected based on the subscription plan identifier.
     • The name of the Microsoft tenant is included as a prefix in the name of each of these licenses. This helps to distinguish licenses when you have multiple Microsoft Online Service tenants.
     • Multiple applications are linked to this license, as defined in the license template.
       Note: If a particular plan is not currently supported by FlexNet Manager Suite, a license with no linked application is created. When the support for this missing plan is added during subsequent automatic updates to the SKU library and Application Recognition Library, a recommended license change appears, suggesting that you link the newly-identified applications to the license.
     • On the Use rights & rules tab of the license properties, in the License consumption rules section, the Allocations consume license entitlements check box is set. This is because Microsoft 365 is a Named User license, and allocations to the users must consume entitlements.
     • On the Consumption tab of the license properties, the template sets the Allocation type to Permanent.
4. Review the All Users and All licenses pages to ensure that the required users and licenses have been created.
5. After license reconciliation has been completed, the Product Summary page shows the compliance status for Microsoft 365.
6. Navigate to License Compliance > All Licenses. Filter the records to view Microsoft 365 licenses. You can check the Consumed and Used columns to know how many subscription entitlements are being used.
7. You can also view the following reports for insights on Microsoft 365 license consumption:
   • User license details
   • License Overlap.

   Note: A subscription to a Microsoft 365 enterprise plan (except E1) allows you to install Microsoft 365 on up to five PCs or Macs, and up to five tablets. FlexNet Manager Suite can only track the installation on devices that are present within your enterprise network. If you wish to include any installation outside the enterprise network, you can create a dummy inventory device and allocate a Microsoft 365 license to track the usage.

Changes in subsequent imports

Each subsequent import from Microsoft 365 updates the following for each license for Microsoft 365:

• Entitlement count
• Expiry date
• Allocations correctly configured (as described above).