[German]A small addendum for administrators who previously assigned their licenses via the Microsoft Entra ID Admin Center and/or the Microsoft Azure Portal. This will be a thing of the past from September 1, 2024 – Microsoft is consolidating license management in one place in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.
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Move to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center
Administrators are probably already aware of this, but I'll mention it again here in the blog. Until now, administrators have been able to make their license assignments for users and groups either in the Microsoft Entra ID Admin Center or in the Microsoft Azure Portal. However, this will end on September 1, 2024.
I recently came across the above Tweet, which points out that the assignment of licenses via the user interfaces of Microsoft Entra ID Admin Center and Microsoft Azure Portal will no longer be possible from September 1, 2024. Microsoft is moving the license assignments for users and groups and the administration to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. Administrators must therefore use the Microsoft 365 Admin Center from this date to manage or assign licenses for users or groups.
A notice should now be displayed in the administration interface of the portals and centers mentioned above (see tweet above). Microsoft now also shows a note on this website.
Starting September 1st, the Microsoft Entra ID Admin Center and the Microsoft Azure portal will no longer support the assignment of licenses through their user interfaces. To manage license assignments for users and groups, administrators are required to use the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. This update is designed to streamline the license management process within the Microsoft ecosystem. This change is limited to the user interface. API and PowerShell access remain unaffected. For detailed guidance on assigning licenses using the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, refer to the following resources:
Microsoft justifies this by stating that the update is intended to streamline the license management process within the Microsoft ecosystem. This change is limited to the user interface, API and PowerShell access remain unaffected. Microsoft is asking all administrators to familiarize themselves with the new procedures to ensure a smooth transition.
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User criticism of this change
What was spontaneously on my mind: Will the old license assignments automatically carry over to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center? Looking through the responses to the above tweet, administrators are not at all enthusiastic about this change. One user writes:
This is absolutely stupid. How can the biggest company in the world make it so difficult for enterprise customers when it probably only takes a little bit of e-engineering to solve the problem. This is exactly why we no longer depend on Microsoft products.
And Martin Heuser asks here: Will the assignment paths (direct/group(s)) also be displayed in the M365 administration portal then? He thinks he remembers that this is only displayed in Entra ID/Azure Portal. And user Joshua Lyndon is very "annoyed" about the change. I'll summarize his comments from several tweets:
This is a clear step backwards for administrators. Example: I have two groups that assign licenses to employees based on certain criteria through dynamic membership. Due to a misconfiguration by the HR department, it is possible for a user to be assigned to both groups. The licenses contradict each other.
In the Entra portal [probably referring to the Microsoft Entra ID Admin Center], diagnosing this licensing conflict is trivial. It is sufficient to view the licensing overview and click on the alert. If you open the group and click on the affected user, you can see which licenses and groups are affected.
This information is simply missing in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. The warning is not available. When an administrator looks at groups, it is shown which users are affected. But the administrator cannot search for the reasons. He has to go back to the user context to see which licenses have been assigned and which groups are affected.
Merill Fernando provides assistance with the changeover in a series of tweets on X. I cannot currently assess whether the concerns expressed above apply. Are affected blog readers aware of the issue and what do they think about it?
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