If you transact your M365 Licensing through a Cloud Solutions Provider, you may be familiar with the process. With changes earlier this year with the New Commerce Experience, the overall process is similar, with different renewal/commitment terms and pricing terms.
Where Commercial Direct with Microsoft may seem convenient, your Managed Service Provider – as an indirect CSP Reseller – may bundle M365 Licensing with their Support Agreements for added value.
CSP Resellers like Dicker Data, Ingram AU, Rhipe etc., will have Granular Delegated Admin Privileges to your M365 tenant. This will grant Just Enough Access for them to add in licensing subscriptions and provide any front-line support before any escalations to Microsoft.
To increment the licenses in a subscription, you would request this from your Account Manager, and they will provide a quotation with the new changes for the current term, monthly or yearly. Note that decreasing the number of licenses is no longer instant in NCE, and the changes are scheduled for the renewal date.
Once the quotation is accepted, the Subscriptions are added or updated with new licensing count through the CSP Portal and the licensing is then made available in the M365 Admin Center to be assigned.
You may also be aware of Group Based Licensing; this is very convenient if you have a large number of users to manage and will have like licenses to be assigned.
The graphic also includes scenarios where you may or may not have your Active Directory synced to Azure Active Directory, but the overall steps are the same.
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