Microsoft 365 User Accounts & Licensing. How it REALLY Works!

In this session, it’s back to basics where we look at how to create and administer user accounts in Microsoft 365. This includes not only looking at the user lifecycle, but also ensuring that the correct licence has been applied. So, if you’re new to Microsoft 365, or you just want to fine tune your admin skills, then this is a session that you’ll not want to miss.
Visit me at Andymalone.org
Timecodes
00:00 Introductions
01:48 Demo - Creating & Licensing Users
08:23 A Word about PowerShell
11:03 Exploring User Properties
17:15 Exploring the Microsoft Entra Admin Centre
18:53 Licensing Tips
20:40 Account Deletion & Restoration
21:56 Granting Admin Roles to Users
24:27 Session Conclusions

[@BlueBearOne]

Thank you! Good explaination about Microsoft

[@aceymac]

As always, excellent presentation. I'd love to see the various ways to handle separation, deleting vs creating a shared mailbox vs archiving tools vs merely blocking a separated user's account. I'm never quite sure the best path. Thanks Andy!

[@leandrojaramillo646]

Thanks a lot for your time doing this video I learned a lot

[@mar4kl]

Thank you so much for that licensing clarification! I only wish someone had made a video like this the first time I needed to administer a Microsoft 365 tenant, because I asked that very question - "Do I need to assign a license to the administrator account?" - and I couldn't find anyone or any resource online that would give me a straight answer. Eventually, I decided to just see what would happen if I didn't assign a license to the administrator account, and found my answer by experimentation. It always amazes me what Microsoft neglects to tell people up front about their server and cloud products. You pretty much have to fly blind, which can get expensive; buy training from somewhere, which *is* expensive; or stumble across videos like yours. Thank you for making them.

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

You’re very welcome and I’m delighted to have you onboard 👍😊

[@buldozzer3456]

As always, great video! Just be aware, that the MSOL and Azure AD powershell modules soon will be replaced by the graph powershell module.

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Hi there, thanks for your comment. Yes I’m well aware of the new incoming power shell module, however, I think it will be a while before these others disappear. At least according to product group anyway. Looking forward to some exciting new features though 😊

[@chriswibberley3412]

Hey Andy, we use the Microsoft Partner Centre to access the admin portals for different tenants so we don’t require individual accounts. However there are some features which we don’t have access to without an account within the tenant. Eg - access to a subscription within the Azure portal (although we can access the portal itself). Or, access to a SharePoint site so we can add a page/document library, etc - we can’t yet do this without logging in with an account with the tenant itself (and in this example, it requires a licence to access SharePoint). What’s the best way of doing this?

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Are you guy's using Lighthouse? It's FREE! You're right though some settings can only be access via Tenant portal.

[@mandhlajangano3379]

Hi Andy, thanks for the informative video. However I'd like to ask if logging in to different devices with the same account affects your licenses. Lets say i have 2 different machines and i login with the same account.

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

No not at all. You can log in on up to 5 devices

[@andrefurtado5435]

Hello, Andy! This is Andre from Brazil speaking, great tips and videos, thanks for sharing! I'm very interesting on Exchange Online certification MS-203, how can I get access to Exchange Portal for training purposes without license? I really appreciate your instructions.

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Hi Andre thanks for reaching out. The easiest way to get a tenant to practice with is to create an Outlook.com account. Then do a search for a Microsoft 360 E5 trial subscription. Will provide you with 30 days to practice. Once done, create another outlook.com account and repeat the process.

[@andrefurtado5435]

Awesome,@@AndyMaloneMVP ! Thanks a lot !

[@smzarrabi]

Hey Andy! Do you have DNS Video for add custom Domain name on MS 365 or Azure?

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Yes. Covered DNS previously on my channel 😊

[@user-xk3bi8gk4f]

Thanks, Andy. When you going to start videos on MS Logics App?

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

I''m planning on one for PowerApps. Pretty much the same thing :-)

[@user-xk3bi8gk4f]

@@AndyMaloneMVP Thanks Andy you are doing really Good Job I Appreciate it.

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

@@user-xk3bi8gk4f I’m delighted to hear that. Thanks so much for the kind comment 👍

[@spirit.canada]

We recently bought our first E5 license and we noticed many new features under security were unlocked in the portal. Is the new security features only apply to users with E5 licenses, or for the E3 as well? How is that work?

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Most are licensed based,.

[@Developers.Fund23]

I have 12 microsoft emails with office I bought from Godaddy and pay monthly for. I also have 2 more from Microsoft directly. 14 total emails with different domains but the same user. How do I tell when I login into Outlook which license I am using? How can I reduce the monthly fees I pay? lastly, I tried to add a 15th email and I get an error saying that the admin (which is me) has limited the number of mailboxes and the new one cannot be added). How do I fix this?

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Straight to the point. So let me be equally candid. Are you talking about domains or email accounts? You don’t make it clear here personally I think you need to go to support.microsoft.com or reach out to the Microsoft Tech community here. May I also suggest that you take up the services of a local Microsoft certified partner who can help you with your problem. Good luck.

[@suzanshresthabikash8539]

Once yoi delete the user. It will lose all license and once we restore it, will it get back those licenses or we have to assign again? And if it loses those licences then what will happen to it's mailbox and one drive? As licence determines the storage capacity of those. Will they lose it? If a user have just 50gb mailbox space and its getting full. Then we want to increase that storage with different licenses without losing any old mail. How we do that?

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Once you delete a user the account goes into a recycle bin for 30days the licence is removed and is available to reassign. The mailbox is stored for 14 days and can be extended to 30 days. Unless you place the mailbox on hold. You can also convert the mailbox to become a shared mailbox. Please see Microsoft documentation for more. Learn.microsoft.com

[@janetoss]

Hi, if I unassign a license, am I still paying for it? Is their a second touchpoint in licensing? We are an indirect reseller.

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Yea

[@janinegarber8355]

If a user changes their name (eg... They got married), do you have to delete the original user and create a new one? There would be a new email address.

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

No you can just edit the account details

[@ahirnimesh09]

how to switch helpdesk to cloud engineer ?

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Take more exams and get experience :-)

[@shawnseilhamer3986]

I got a question is there any Blu-ray players that have a Blu-ray Disc recorder in it like a dvd recorder

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Similar tech but with much more capacity 😊

[@lordviator]

Here's a newbie question of 'Should I be looking at Microsoft?'. Lets say as a starting point.... A cpl of managers who create a staff rota in Excel, and 50 front line service employees who need to see that rota, and maybe fill in a leave request form every now and again. That's it. They don't work at a computer, and they don't do anything else on a computer. Would every one of those employees need a license?

[@itsnotatoober]

Have one employee profile to login to on the computer and one staff login, and have the employees sign their name on the form they send in. Doesn't need to be more complicated that it needs to be

[@_nopestr]

@@itsnotatoober Sure. If you want people to be able to mess with each other's requests. And if you want to break the license terms. To answer your question, @lordviator, there's an F1 license specifically for that scenario. A "Frontline Workers" license. It gives you access to Teams, which has the "Shifts" function, where the managers can publish rota, take requests, employees can swap shifts between themselves. It's actually really good, and it's well integrated into MS Teams mobile app, so the workers don't need a computer.

[@itsnotatoober]

​@@_nopestr Nice try. It doesn't violate license terms. And there are 1000 ways to protect from messing with requests without buying 50+ licenses. It's always the nasty ones that are the most ignorant.

[@_nopestr]

@@itsnotatoober I'm not ignorant. It does violate the license. You can't share a single account among multiple people. The same with activating Office on multiple computers - you can only activate the computers used by that specific person. You can't activate on one account, and then have another user use Office - it will eventually lock. There are shared computer activations available, but AFAIK every user of that computer still has to be licensed. It seems that you're the one who's ignorant. And I was never nasty, so back off.

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Use Staff hub or Microsoft Bookings. Combine this with a Microsoft PowerAutomate. Simple :-)

[@nomorebs1668]

So I am seeking information about windows users and windows logins and one drive. I see you have a MAC. I have no idea what your talking about now. Who ever the user is they will be using a keyborad and screen and they will need to be loged in to that machine. So now we have a user and a user and 2 different portals azer and something else. Gee now Im feeling like I have a good grasp. NOT !

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Believe me, I understand how you feel. I appreciate learning something so seemingly enormous can often be overwhelming. I recommend in this situation breadcrumbs. Don’t try and learn everything at once. Try and learn in bite-size chunks. To be honest, the best advice I can give you as an instructor is learn something and practice three times. Watch a video read a book, do a hands-on exercise three times. Once, and it’s confusing. Twice, and it becomes familiar. The third time, however you know it. This is a philosophy that I have lived by over the span of my career. It does not matter that I’m using a Mac or you’re using windows as I’ve said many times it’s about how I can consume my data in a secure way. it’s no longer about a device. It’s about the data. I wish you success my friend and don’t worry you’ll get there. Andy